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WEIGHING IN: Wet Spring Can Mean A Risky Business

I had a nice chat with DTN’s Bryce Anderson and Dan Davidson recently to get a handle on how this year’s corn season looks so far. For too many of you, it doesn’t look like much of anything yet -- but don’t let your grower-customers get out in their fields too quickly.

Bryce Anderson, DTN meteorologist, tells me that it’s just been too wet and cool in the Midwest for planting -- especially in the central and western areas. And the colder weather, along with more rainfall, is making the rounds again this week. Some of that weather’s headed into the eastern half of the Corn Belt this week, too, but Anderson says at least some of those growers had more opportunities to plant already.

(According to news reports I saw today, depending on rainfall, other areas of the country are having much better luck getting their corn crop in the ground and are almost done planting.)

“We really don’t look for the western half of the Midwest to be able to do very much notable field work until after the first of May,” Anderson says. “Now that doesn’t mean corn planting is going to be a disaster, but like happens every so often, it’s going to tax the ability of the huge infrastructure that we have for doing field work to really be able to accomplish what we need to.

“It’s not out of the question that it’s going to be May 15 before quite a bit of corn gets planted,” he adds. “We’ve had some customers in Iowa who have sent us some pictures on e-mail of their ground that still is under water, and there are guys who think it’s going to be the last half of May before they get going. Now I want to temper that: Just because planting may get going late doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be a distastrous crop.”

Anderson cites a recent Purdue University Extension bulletin as cause for optimism in a late-planting year. In that bulletin, the researchers note that there have been years when the corn was planted early, yet had lower yields than expected, and vice versa. “Their research examples point out that early planting favors higher yield but doesn’t guarantee higher yield,” he says. “Their other point is that statewide averages for planting date and yield really are not strongly related, and then planting date is just one of many, many factors that influences yield.”

OK, so we know much of the Corn Belt is dealing with cool, wet soils with more adverse weather in the forecast. According to Dan Davidson, DTN agronomist, such soils present several risks that you need to remind your grower-customers about.

• So little time, so much moisture, so great the risk for compaction. “We have a very truncated spring now,” Davidson says. “People haven’t got a lot of stuff done, they want to do field work, they want to spread fertilizer, they want to spray, they want to do a little tillage, they want to plant.” It may appear appropriate to till or plant the field, but working in wet conditions runs the risk of soil compaction “that a farmer has to live with through the rest of the year.”
  
  Those with sandy soil may be able to get into a field three days after a heavy rain, but clay soils can require a five- to six-day wait. “It doesn’t have to be the most ideal conditions to go out in the field, but you don’t want to go when it’s too wet,” he advises.
  
  
• Rushing the decision to switch hybrids or to soybeans. If conditions continue to stay wet for the next few weeks, should your growers switch corn hybrids or to soybeans? “We are not at that point right now to make that decision yet,” he says. “We’re probably not going to suffer any real corn yield losses across most of the Corn Belt if you get your corn planted by May 8, May 10.”
  
  Davidson says most corn experts would advise your growers to stay with the corn hybrid they already purchased as long as it’s still May. “It’s probably not very likely that a farmer will be able to go to his dealer and trade it off for a shorter season hybrid, because if he’s doing that, so is somebody else, and the demand for shorter season hybrids is going to be tight.” If the grower still has ground to plant at the end of May, he recommends “backing off five days in relative maturity” if switching hybrids.
  
  “As for switching corn to soybeans, that decision doesn’t have to be made for 30 days yet,” he states. Growers can just stay with their corn and not really worry about switching soybeans until the end of May.
  
  
• Your growers’ fields may be losing nitrogen. For those that already put on their full amount of nitrogen this season, even in early spring, you’ll need to perform soil tests to see if there are any losses due to leaching or denitrification.
  
  Growers could just sidedress on a little nitrogen. Sounds expensive, but it will help them maintain their yield goals.
  
  
• Herbicide application delays gives weeds a fighting chance – and takes preemerge products out of the equation. “Typically guys in no-till do some tillage early, then they come back and put down a preemerge before the weeds germinate,” he says. “But if the weeds are already germinating and coming out of the soil, your preemerge isn’t going to do the job. So you just need to do, if you haven’t done your preemerge applications on your growers’ corn ground yet, and you don’t do any kind of a burndown product, you have to at least look at your fields, look at them individually, see if there’s any weed pressure out there. If there’s any weeds coming up, you better have a plan for taking them out, because your preemerge itself won’t do it.”

Davidson offers this warning to retailers: “Unless the grower’s doing tillage or a burndown, the preemerge won’t do a good enough job and these weeds will come up and there’ll be a complaint.” He recommends ensuring that your growers understand the limitations of the herbicide being used before application.

As for this year’s soybean crop, Anderson says conditions look to be “fairly promising. There is a little bit of a chance that the Pacific may tend toward more of an El Niño track by the end of the summer, and if that happens, you would start to get more of a sustained southerly jet stream working inland and bringing in some more frequent rain systems into the Midwest, and usually late-season rainfall is pretty good for the soybean crop.”

This week’s Reader Poll ties in with Davidson’s statement about growers trading their corn seed in for a shorter-season hybrid. Any comments about your policy?

Amy L. Fahnestock
alfahnestock@meistermedia.com
Senior Associate Editor, CropLife Group