Harvest is underway in Indiana as Hoosier farmers take advantage of perfect conditions to get the combines going and begin to find out just what kind of year it will really be. Agronomist Kirby Bacon covers the northern half of the state for Monsanto and says 2015 conditions all year are leading to predictably large swings in yields.
“This is going to be one of those years that again we have to look back at the history and the life of the crop,” he told HAT. “We had some unprecedented events that occurred in some places this year, so our results I guess it’s fair to say are all over the board. We are seeing some really strong performance in some areas and we’re unfortunately seeing some of the stuff on the other end of the spectrum.”
Those yields on the plus side, in some cases, have been record breakers.
“I’ve already run into some circumstances where we’ve had corn yields that are coming in records for those particular fields on the high end of the spectrum,” he said.
Bacon added those farmers benefited from the luxury of being in an area with a very low stress growing season. He adds that combines are really rolling heavily so that stressed crops can be harvested before any more damage can be done.
“When we see plants that are willing to put a lot of their metabolism into their reproductive process, that naturally puts a lot of strain on the agronomic system within that plant, whether it’s a corn plant or a soybean plant,” Bacon explained. “So that said, we do have some plants out there today that are carrying a really, really strong reproductive load and in that process sometimes we get conditions with stresses where diseases are more prevalent. So I have seen conditions this year where we’ve got some disease in some fields and it’s going to have a big impact, so I am in the camp that says we need to get out and get after it to capture what we have to minimize losses and maximize incomes.”