The Land — The American seed industry isn’t bashful about talking up a future of 300-bushel corn yields.
Spokespersons for the industry unequivocally predict a national corn yield of that historic proportion by 2030, only 20 years down the road. The national average for 2009 appears to be in the 165- to 166-bushel area, a new record for American corn producers, even though there were lots of 300-bushel yields despite wet, cool and sometimes dry conditions.
But not everyone is on that “300 by 30” bandwagon even though acknowledging the tremendous gains that biotechnology is exerting on U.S. corn yields.
“I’ve just written a paper questioning if current fertility recommendations are good enough for the future,” said Gyles Randall, soil scientist and long-time observer/researcher of crop production techniques at the University of Minnesota Southern Research & Outreach Center at Waseca.
“The prognosticators are talking of annual yield increases of 6 bushels per year but as I reviewed yield data the past 10 years, the reality is that if we get a 3-bushel-per-year increase we’re really doing well.
“So looking at recent history, I would say we’ll be darn lucky if we hit that 300-bushel national average by 2040, maybe even 2050. We all know that everything’s got to be going right, especially precipitation patterns, to bump these record yields. It seems like our precipitation is more unpredictable. We get a ton of it this month, then we go four to five weeks without measurable rain, then we get a bunch more. A sporadic rainfall pattern is certainly not the way you build high yields.”
Tom McGraw, of Midwest Independent Soil Samplers of Buffalo Lake, is a long-time advocate of fertilizing for maximum yields. He also indicated water management is critical. His firm works across Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota advising fertility programs based on grid sampling even down to 2 1/2-acre grids.
He’s a proponent of pattern tiling so access water doesn’t limit yield. He cautions, however, that producers with relatively level fields — less than 3 percent slope — also need to seriously look at subsurface irrigation and storing rainfall in the soil profile to keep it available as needed by the growing corn crop.
“We’re talking systems that drain the water to get crops planted,” McGraw said. “Systems with a series of stop-locks solar powered to open and close gates after the crop is planted maintain that water table for maximum utilization. Yes, (it’s) expensive to get these systems installed but by being able to control water usage, you have taken major steps to maintain yields.”
George Rehm, former U of M soil scientist and now a consultant with the Minnesota Agricultural Water Resources Coalition, said, “as we look to the future, farmers today are doing a better job of protecting the environment than people realize. And as yields increase this is a positive for the environment in so many ways. More residue to be incorporated into the soil; more protection from soil erosion; and thanks to GPS technologies less soil compaction too. What consumers don’t realize is that consumers win with high yields because food prices are mostly dictated by supplies of the raw materials in the food chain.”
Rehm calls the effects of biotechnology “fantastic.”
“There’s no doubt the genetic growth of corn in the future will even exceed what’s happening today,” he said. “You won’t see one major technique that jumps yield. Research instead will give us the various ways we can ‘tweak’ these yields year by year. I see residue management on continuous corn as a next major hurdle for Minnesota farmers. ... I tell farmers the trash whipper, the residue mover, whatever you want to call it in combination with banded fertilizer close to the seed will get us over this hurdle based on what we know right now.”
