With winter settling in and harvest behind us, it’s a good time to reflect on the past growing season and to consider what went well and what adjustments could be made for future improvements in yield, quality, or harvest timing. Since margins in all enterprises currently are slim to non-existent, it’s critical to look for any changes that would help to reduce expenses or increase output.
Spring planting was delayed until May and circumstances caused some corn to be planted well into June. Experience and observation have taught me that July-planted corn results in a disaster. Alternatives to corn should be considered after mid-June. Of course, an alternative summer forage comes with a compromise in terms of yield or energy or both, but the corn crop itself is compromised when it is planted late.
Waiting for the corn to reach maturity before a killing frost can cause headaches. We had plenty of growing degree days this year to push the crop along, but the excess moisture from August on created challenging conditions for harvest. Nobody likes to slog around in the mud. It’s hard on the equipment and hard on the nerves of the people fighting through the mud. We can’t predict the weather, but we can try to hedge our situation with planning. Hybrid maturity and flow of field demands when spring arrives are two critical areas to address.
A lightbulb went off in my head this fall when I was listening to the news about the impending hurricane season. We will need to consider the fall hurricane season in our cropping plans, especially its impact on harvest. As the world’s oceans warm, the Atlantic fall hurricane season is predicted to start earlier and for storms to carry much more moisture, leading to greater precipitation fallout. The greater strength and intensity of Caribbean and Atlantic hurricanes increases the likelihood of them impacting us, as we experienced this year. We have certainly experienced an increase of both severe floods from rivers cresting their banks and flash floods in the last decade. This fall our soils were already saturated or on the edge of saturation before the hurricane fallout arrived, creating conditions that were ripe for rivers overflowing their banks and causing flash floods, which hit our Southern Tier counties pretty hard, once again (recent memorable years include a stalled jet stream to the west of the Appalachian Mountains in 2006 and Tropical Storm Lee in 2012).
A management area to seriously consider is the maturity rating of your corn and soybeans. Select maturity groups that don’t rely on an exceptional season to finish. A few extended falls in succession lure us into a state of complacency; and then we have a cooler than average season. For example, in 2017 our crops would have struggled to reach maturity without the unusually warm second half of September. The trend for silage has been to select longer maturities to maximize yield. On well-drained soils, that’s a reasonable strategy. But as we move to less well-drained soils or to increased elevation typical of our hill soils, I suggest being a bit more conservative on maturity selection.
There are two very important pieces to the corn silage puzzle: yield and quality. When the crop doesn’t mature timely and you are at the point where you are hoping it finishes before frost, you are highly likely to have a compromised crop. Harvesting at an ideal moisture level to support fermentation becomes harder and an immature ear will have lower starch levels, resulting in less available energy. It might save some time and fuel at harvest because you won’t have to crank the processor down, but I don’t believe that will offset the lost nutritional value.
The yield advantage between hybrid groups is not as great as it once was. We used to see a yield advantage of 1 ton or greater of silage for an uptick in maturity group. Today’s hybrids are better able to handle stress conditions from pests to vagaries of weather such as drought and excess moisture. If you look at hybrid yield trial results you will find competitive hybrids in all maturity groups. Eliminating the barriers to reaching yield potential include selecting a hybrid that matches the conditions where it will be planted with the traits you need will support overall performance.