Time to Prioritize Fields for Harvest

Harvest is upon us! Some have already started while many in northern Indiana will start in the next week or so, that according to Beck’s Field Sales Agronomist Travis Burnett. He says now is the time to start prioritizing fields for harvest.

“So, this is the time of year that I encourage guys to get out and do some push tests or pinch tests evaluating stalk quality. It got really dry in certain portions of the state there in the month of August and there’s been a lot of cannibalization going on. There are some questionable stalks out there.”

Burnett adds that prioritizing fields will help avoid a catastrophe should we have a major wind event rip through the area.

“And a lot of times, it’s not always based off of planting date. There are certain hybrids in certain fields that probably need to be prioritized from a harvest timing standpoint instead of just looking at moisture.”

Many areas are dealing with drought stress, and Burnett says there are some things you’ll have to manage around. In those fields where we have issues with premature death, Burnett says,

“There’s going to be some wide fluctuations or variation of harvest moisture. Unfortunately, a whole field doesn’t always die down at the same time. A lot of times you’ll have corn that prematurely black layered because of that premature death. In that same time, we have portions of that field, typically lower lying areas of that field, that had enough moisture to go ahead and finish naturally. That’s going to be a lot higher moisture corn, so make sure that we get that corn good and dry going in the bin if you’re going to store on the farm will be a big thing to pay attention to as well.”

Beck’s is dedicated to serving a community of farmers who love what they do and are proud to be farmers at heart. Learn more at beckshybrids.com.

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