Stalk quality is a concern as corn harvest rolls on across Indiana. In a Channel Seed harvest update, Jeff Lakin, technical agronomist in the northwest Indiana region says stalks are generally of average quality right now.
“I would be working with your seed professionals and your agronomist to isolate which products to be targeting getting out of the field,” he explained. “We’ve got some stalks that are pretty brittle, and we saw a little bit of corn go down after some of the wind this weekend, and the longer some of this corn stands out, the more likely that those stalks are going to disintegrate. We just need to get a lot of that stuff out of the ground, so work with your trusted advisors whether that be your agronomist or your salesperson and isolate which products to be targeting first.”
While Lakin put soybean harvest at about 95% complete in his area, corn harvest may be only be halfway completed.
“Things have slowed down a little bit here in the last week or so, a week to ten days. Elevators are getting full. They’re having to sit in line a little more and things have slowed down a little but we’re still on a good pace to get things wrapped up in a pretty timely manner this year.”
Just like growing season rains, yields run the spectrum.
“We’re seeing some record corn yields in some areas and then we’ve seen some record soybean yields in areas, but there’s a lot of variability out there as well,” he told HAT. “It just depends on where the rain was and where the rain wasn’t, but in general I think yields, corn and soybeans, are better than what would have been expected in July.”
It’s no surprise that Lakin reports very positive results from in-season fungicide applications.
“I’ve seen anywhere from 20 to 40-bushel swings where guys left some check strips where they applied fungicide versus didn’t apply fungicide, so this year it was a big deal to put fungicide out there. We had plenty of disease late in the season between southern rust and anthracnose.”
Hear more from Jeff Lakin in the full HAT and Channel Seed harvest update:
