Harvest 2019 - a different kind of year
CUSTER COUNTY -There’s a stereotype that Nebraska farmers are plain-spoken and direct. So let’s put it plainly. The 2019 harvest in this area is about two weeks behind normal. Whether or not harvest will be good? Depends.
Planting this year was delayed by cold and wet weather. Growth was delayed by cold temperatures, saturated soil and lack of sunlight.
Farmers still may see good crops, however, the second week of October brought freezing temperatures, winds and even snow. If that’s any indication, Mother Nature may continue to add to harvest season challenges.
“It looks like a long, extended harvest,” Nolan Hueftle, agronomist with Ag-Advisory Services said. He and his son, Conrad Hueftle, also an agronomist with Ag-Advisory Services, sat down and discussed the 2019 harvest and growing season with the Custer County Chief the second week of October and followed up a few weeks later.
Looking through photos of the same corn field taken at approximately the same spot throughout the growing season, Conrad pointed to one dated May 27 which showed corn was only a few inches high in a muddy field. “That may be the most telling photo of all,” he said. That particular field, he explained, was planted in early May and it took nearly three weeks for the seed to germinate and for plants to sprout.
“What happened to us early, it was so cold and wet,” Nolan said. “It was cold above ground, it was below ground. The growth was held back.”
With soils saturated with water, lack of oxygen was a factor; plants could not breathe. “Lot’s of people don’t think about below ground” Nolan said. “We didn’t have enough oxygen for young plants. We didn’t see good, actual growth until it warmed up and we had dry roots.”
The biggest problem for soybeans was the cold, wet weather of May. “We didn’t get overall branches and nodes where the plants can hang pods,” Nolan said.
Early growth can also be slowed by residue from the previous harvest, especially if that residue is holding in lots of moisture. Residue can block sun and heat, too, yet at the same time it adds nutrients and holds soil in place. Conrad acknowledges the trade-off. “You take the good with the bad,” he said. More early quick growth was seen in soybeans fields with less residue this
year.
Both Nolan and Conrad are fans of strip tilling. “It’s the best of both worlds,” Conrad said.
Strip-tilling leaves residue for conservation and moisture yet where the ground is tilled, residue is pulled under for nutrients and the sun can warm the soil. “It’s the best system we’ve got,” Nolan said.
The sun and heat necessary for germination and growth are measured in GDUs (Growing Degree Units). A rough estimate is that one good day of sun and heat equals about 24 GDUs.
“Lack of GDUs was problematic this year,” Nolan said. According to information Conrad gathered over the growing season, there was a big stretch of time in May and June that was below normal GDUs and another below normal stretch in late August. Good conditions were limited to early July and most of Sept. “We were hurt by lack of sunshine,” Conrad said.
According to Conrad, the normal total GDUs for this area’s growing season (May 2-Oct. 9) is 2,793. This year saw 2,835. That means 2019 had only 42 GDUs more than normal, which translates approximately into almost two days more of sun and heat than normal. While being “above normal” sounds good, compare that to the previous two years. 2018 saw 17.5 more days (393 GDUs) for a total of 3,186 GDUs than 2019. 2017 had 12 more days (284 GDUs) for a total of 3,077 GDUs than 2019.
This year, “September really saved the corn crop, to get it as mature as it could get,” Nolan added.
Soybeans are even less sunshine dependent than corn but they still were affected. Conrad noted the amount of seed abortion in August was “far more than I’ve ever seen it before.”
By the second week of October, Conrad noted that 10-15 percent of corn fields hadn’t yet reached black layer that is the point where the corn kernel is ready to separate from the cob and is ready for harvest. “We will have some area fields that do less yield because of this week’s frost,” he said, in anticipation of freezing temperatures and snow forecast for Oct 9, 10 and 11.
So how is harvest coming along?
“There’s a lot of wet corn out there,” Nolan said. “We missed out on drying days the last of September and early October. However, this last week (Oct. 13-18) has taken about a point of moisture per day out of the corn.”
As of early October, the corn being harvested was all high moisture. Local feeders like Adams Land and Cattle and Bobcat Feeders are taking wet corn, but they can only take so much.
For those who won’t be harvesting high-moisture corn, “it’s a waiting game, “Nolan said. “If you have dryers, you’re in good shape.” For producers who don’t have access to a drying system, they wait. And as farmers know, the longer the crop stays in the field, the higher the risk that something will happen to it.
Agronomists like Nolan and Conrad, along with Jacob Hueftle, work with farmers throughout the season, documenting field growth and making recommendations. Problems they have seen this year included stalk rot,
root rot and weak ear shanks. Seedling disease was responsible for 6 to 12,000 injured or dead plants. High humidity caused white mold, common rust, BLS, brown spots, GLS and very late Southern rust.
“We try to target fields that have special issues and get them harvested as timely as possible,” Conrad said. However, there are some situations where quick harvest isn’t going to help. “If a field is bad and won’t get any worse, for example, the farmer should go for the good fields and come back to the bad,” he added.
Most farmers have a good idea when a field is planted what the crops destination will be - be it feedlot, elevator, silage or ethanol. However, as Nolan noted, “plans change.” He worked with a producer this year who switched three fields from dry harvest to wet harvest because they were the only fields ready to go. “Farmers want to get going,” he said.
As of the second week of October, both Nolan and Conrad said harvest was OK, though roughly about two weeks behind. Area producers usually get out to the corn fields by September 15 for high-moisture corn and by Sept. 20 for dry with harvest wrapping up by the second week of November. This year, both corn and soybean harvest was just gearing up the second week of October.
“We’ve already missed out on 15 to 18 days,” Nolan said. “This year, the first corn came out in the first week of October.”
As to yields, fields that were planted early are doing better than fields that were planted late. “We ran out of time and heat units,” Nolan said. That goes for both corn and soybeans. “Early planted beans are doing well,” he added. “Late planted beans have me worried.”
Some fields already harvested were seeing yields as high as 240 bushel/acre. “Out here,” Nolan said, “if you’re doing everything else right, the yield is limited only by sunlight.” He noted the new world record Soybean yield winner was in Georgia this year. “They planted in 75 degree soil and had 90 days over 90 degrees,” he said.
If there is a silver lining on the cloud
that was this year’s growing season, it may be dramatically decreased electric bills for some growers. “Irrigation costs this year were as cheap as we’ve ever seen it,” Nolan said. “Some guys didn’t even make up the hook-up charge.”
As harvest season continued, strong winds with gusts as high as 60 mph hit much of Ccentral nebraska Oct. 21. “High wind events during harvest can cause harvest losses in several ways. ,” Nolan said. “It will be hard for area fields to escape damage from stalk lodging and ear drop from these types of high winds that have occurred far to often this time of year.”
This year, wishes for sun, heat and calm days seemingly have gone unanswered, just as wishes for rain in 2012 were unanswered. 2019 will be remembered as a year with many challenges. Nonetheless, farmers do what they must to get crops both into and out of the fields. Ever the optimists, they will harvest what they can get and carry what they have learned from this year into the next.