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Land Minds: History repeating itself?
Originally published in the November 13, 2009, print edition.
“Harvest corn in the spring?” was the headline above a story in the November 1987 issue of Farm Show. I had told Harold Johnson, a long-time farm editor friend, and at that time editor-publisher of Farm Show, about my venture in farming the year prior. The following is his/my story from that issue.
If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of letting corn stand in the field over winter to let Mother Nature dry and store it, you’ll get a lot of encouragement from Richard Hagen, Olivia, an 80-acre hobby farmer and ridge-till enthusiast.
A year ago this fall, his corn crop was high in moisture. So instead of going through the hassle and expense of running it through a dryer, into storage and then back out again in the spring for delivery to the local elevator, he decided to let the crop stand in the field over winter and then harvest, hopefully in early April.
Fortunately, last winter was one of the mildest ever in Minnesota and Hagen’s corn crop “survived” with excellent standability and ear retention — despite the fact that he’d planted about one-third of the acreage to 90-day maturity seed.
Thanks to an early spring, he was able to harvest the crop April 1 (no pun intended) when temperatures were in the low-20s and there was still enough frost to carry the combine.
Average yield was 133.3 bushels per acre. Moisture content averaged 15 percent and field loss was only 7 percent. Adding up the pluses and minuses, Hagen figures he netted an extra $30 per acre by letting the crop over-winter in the field. Here’s how it penciled out:
On the plus side, he saved $33.33 per acre in storage costs (he doesn’t have grain storage facilities) figured at 25 cents per bushel and $24.66 per acre in drying costs (18 cents per bushel). On the minus side, since standing corn doesn’t quality for Commodity Credit Corp. loan, the opportunity cost of lost interest was $11.66 (133.3 bushels times $1.75 loan rate times 10 percent interest for six months). The 7 percent field loss translated to a cost of $16.45 (9.4 bushels at the $1.75 per bushel loan rate).
The final tally: $29.88 or right at $30 per acre net advantage for spring over fall harvested corn.
Twenty-two years later, in 2009, would I recommend doing this again? Only if fall harvest wasn’t doable because of weather or “whatever” conditions. Lots of risks associated with leaving your corn until spring even though today’s hybrids seem to have far stronger stalks, and ear droppage really isn’t much an issue any more.
I recall drifting snow did pretty well clobber the eight rows of corn on the west side of the field (rows ran north and south). Also remember that I was a ridge tiller, which meant there was no fall or spring tillage. With my corn going on last year’s soybean ridges, I did a fall fertilizer application about six inches deep right on the soybean ridges for next year’s corn.
My only request is that if any readers do indeed leave some corn until next spring (for whatever the reason), let me know the results. The tremendous crunch of getting harvest, tillage and fall fertilization done this fall is likely creating a bit more gray hair for Minnesota farmers.
Dick Hagen is staff writer of The Land. He may be reached at dickhagen@rswb.coop.
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