Farming the Countryside with Andrew McCreaFTC Episode 241: What To Do AND Not Do With Your Corn & Bean Crop This Year
Ken Ferrie is always a great resource on all things related to growing corn and soybeans. We check in with him to learn what to do AND not do this growing season to achieve the greatest crop.
This edition of Farming. The countryside is brought to you by pivot biop proven 40 os the nitrogen you need now on seed, learn more at pivot bio dot com.
Welcome to farm in the countryside. I'm Andrew mccray. Ken ferry is always a great resource on all things related to growing corn and soybeans. We check in with him to learn what to do and not to do this growing season to achieve the greatest crop. It's our topic for this week's farm in the countryside brought to you by Pivot bio.
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Corn and soybeans are an important part of many farming operations. In fact, we hooked up our corn and bean planters this past week. Although I think we'll still be waiting a bit to get in the field over the years, Ken Ferry has become one of the leading mines that helps growers achieve the best crops, Ken has many growing seasons under his belt and he's constantly evaluating a multitude of practices and products. I always enjoy the chance to catch up with him and get his insights on what he sees and the advice he can share
Ken Ferry with crop tech consulting Hayworth Illinois joins me. Ken has uh been on our show usually about this time of year every year as we think about planning season, Ken. Number one, thank you for joining me again. And secondly, if people have not seen this yet, really nice article in Farm Journal magazine, the January issue,
certainly talking about crop issues, but a little bit of your background and I didn't know uh about your start. You started near Cresco, Iowa, started a co-op and was it an incident of the grain leg that made you decide I want to do something other than that, that job?
Yeah. I've, I was happy with that job. I mean, uh uh it was my kind of my first job out of high school. But um the incident with the green leg is still in my mind. So, yeah, it had a, it had an influence with me.
It sounds like you were digging out the uh pit and digging it out from rats and all kinds of stuff. Is that right? Yeah,
the, the grain leg. Um, in this case, it was full of mainly rotten soybeans and how, uh, grain legs are in those older elevators, you know, got moisture down in the leg. So that didn't help anyone way to go down there and clean that all out. And, yeah, we had some furry friends in there with us.
Well, hey, how did you wind up over in Illinois then? I always thought that you grew up in Illinois. But, uh, you grew up in Iowa. So, what was the transition to get you over to Illinois then?
Uh, it, it definitely was a job, um, back in that time when I did graduate, uh, and with plans to come back to the co-op where I was at or hope to, um, it was in the, you know, the crash of the eighties and financially the,
the elevator, um, was struggling. So I went on a, on a job hunt. So through a, I guess a head hunter or job placement service went and did a series of interviews, um, across the Midwest and, and chose a job, uh, here in Illinois.
And you've been doing that ever since then? Uh, it continues to grow over time, hasn't it?
Yeah. My original plan was to, uh, to, to move to the location in Illinois for three years and then move back to northeast Iowa. But, uh, that's been almost 40 years ago and I haven't got back yet.
Well, we're gonna jump into some of the things that, uh, some topics we talk about every year. But some new, I am curious though every season of course, is unique. But were there any things that you saw last year that were either new or reminded you that, hey, we need to think about this going into this year.
You know, we talk a lot with our customers about, um,
you know, scouting, right? And, and we kind of try to drive home that every farm operation no matter how big or small it is, it needs a, what we call a pest boss. That's one central person who's responsible for all threats against the farm and mainly being weeds, insects, disease, that type of thing. So, as a consultant, we can call one person, get a straight answer what's happening. Has somebody been watching this scouting that, that type of thing?
And that one person then can put together a team of, uh, we call it the best team that is, um, basically watching all the fields and keeping track of everything that's going on and reporting back to the one person, the best boss
and some of the smaller operations, that whole team may be me, myself and I, right, and, you know, as far as it may be one person doing it all and a lot of other operations, it may be, uh, one person who's responsible, but two or three other people that
they may have other jobs on the farm. But when it comes to scouting, they're called in to help. So they may be working with livestock or they may be um doing the mechanical uh operations out there as far as getting the equipment ready, something like that. And they get called into that job or uh it may be the seed man, the guy that sells them seed, he may be helping scout or their local retailer may be doing some of that.
Um But in the process that somebody is watching those fields all the time, so we don't get caught and we're starting to uh do things by kind of the reactive side. You want to be proactive with it. And um part of that is understanding your disease, pressure and stuff like that. So last year, um a lot of people, a lot of effort in the Midwest was thrown after tar spot
Because of how tough it was on us. Um, especially down here in Illinois in 2021.
Um And we hardly had any, you know, so guys sprayed twice and guys did a lot of different things to keep the tar spot out. But we really had very little disease pressure. Um, now for the guys that were scouting and they understand the disease triangle, this wasn't a big surprise, but for some of the people who, uh, aren't paying attention to that, they kind of scratch their head and said, well, you know, I try to fund your side but I didn't get a very big response out of it.
Uh, and that team there is probably likely not to be weight watching for it in 2023. And the reality is that tar spot is still out there.
It's just the environmental conditions for us this year were
Not in favor of that disease. So, and when we think about insects or disease and again, thinking about the disease triangle, what were the conditions like, what, you know, what created the problem in 21? And why didn't it show up in 22? The team needs to understand that it makes, it makes the scouting a lot easier and it makes a lot more sense. So they aren't confused about, you know, why they didn't see some of the same things a year later.
You know, as we speak right now, we are on the cusp of planting season for most areas. I think a lot of areas have still been very cold. And if you go in the northern corn belt still have some snow. Um What should I be thinking about as far as when I put seed in this, in the soil? Uh There are certainly times when it may seem too cold. But what have we learned about the right and best planting date?
You know, when it, it's different for corn and beans, of course. And, and what we've always told our customer base, we plant corn based on soil conditions, not the calendar. So if those conditions are perfect, we, we're above that 50° mark in the soil and the soil conditions are right. They're not too wet and that's the 14th of April. We're putting corn in the ground on 14 April.
But like this year, we didn't get there until the 8th, 9th, early the 10th of May down here when conditions were a green light to go. Now, uh some corn did get planted into April. Uh And uh it had a tough time. I mean, we had to, it to get it up and then you had that tough stand where you're trying to decide, do you keep it or do you start over or what do you do?
Um And as we go through many yield maps with our customers, um we're actually just finishing up last year's yield maps. Uh Quite a few matter of fact, the majority of them, the May planted corn was 2030 bush all over our April planted corn and and that leads for some frustration for the grower because, you know, as a, as a
Books would tell us April 22 is kind of the optimum planning date. Uh and May nine or 10th, you should be giving up yield already. But this year, May 10 was uh probably the prime time to be putting corn in the ground because the conditions are right. Corn came out of the ground in five days, which led to higher ear counts, which led to higher yields at the end.
Um And, you know, pushing corn tends to work against you. So
Right now, we always kind of talk about, can we plant our corn in, you know, 5-7 days? Now, it may take a month right to get 5-7 days of good planting. But if you're, if it takes you 10, 15 days to get your corn planted, you need to reevaluate your that process, you know, size up the plan or go faster if you have a higher speed plan or that type of thing.
But the guys who can get it done inside of seven days usually can wait and be patient and wait for the right conditions to plant their corn. Uh when it gets stretched out there two weeks or more, they have to push it on the front end or they're gonna be uh dragging on the back end to get, you know, all their corn planted to find enough days of planting, our growing season is longer, but our days of planting is shortened up due the amount of rainfall we've had through
uh whatever you wanna call it, climate change or whatever. But we deal with more of these uh stop and go type situations, soybeans. On the other hand, um got a lot of room there right. As far as um we've got a lot of beans have been planted in April before And that's our highest yielding soybeans here in the Midwest, if we can get them in there and get some preso flowering.
So the question comes back, maybe we should give up on planting corn in April, throw all our beans in, in April and then wait till May to plant our corn. And it again, it's not a calendar thing. You plant corn if, if conditions are perfect. 10th 15th of April for corn, you put corn in the ground. Uh but you can cheat the soybeans. Um And we can lose a third or you know, even half of the soybeans stand and still be within 90% of our yo go. You can't do that on corn, right? You gotta,
you gotta have the ear count to get the to get the corn yields that you're looking for,
Right? I know what you mean about those planting days. We planted all the corn in seven days last year and that stretched from late April to early June. It was, it took a long time. One of the things that, uh, you've written about here about, uh, some of your big 10 agronomic lessons, soybeans respond to environment. They don't always respond to management and talk about that for a moment.
Yeah, that in our research trials,
you know, we're, we're looking at all different things that we could throw at corn and soybeans
in corn response to management. Soybean tends to respond to the environment. So it's, it's a little bit frustrating from that standpoint because you can be a high end corn manager and put some of those same practices to soybeans and not see a response. And we think about
starter fertilizer, for instance, as we work with starter fertilizer on corn, we see some pretty decent responses. It is tough to maintain a consistent repeatable response when we're talking about soybeans to starter fertilizer. I know I could pick through our data and I could find responses and we get visual responses that's easy to get. The beans are taller and greener and look better.
But then to actually put that in the uh scale cart and get an actual measured weight response. That's kind of tough to do and fungicides the same way depending where you are and what crop you're growing. There's always not the same consistency in our fungicide trials in soybeans as there is in corn. Uh down here in, in central Illinois anyway, uh population, I mean, we can plant soybeans from uh
as low as 60,000 and up to 200,000
and not change the yield. Um You can't do that with corn. You can't do that with a lot of other crops. So it's a challenge to, to make that soybean yield better. We can change the environment. For instance, we can put it uh soybeans in after maybe 234 years of corn on corn, you can almost mark on the calendar. You're gonna get a yield response, uh a positive response uh to corn following a longer rotation.
And whether it works for us, if we can get the beans planted early, uh again, you're changing their environment and you can get them to preso as flour. Um And that's probably been a very consistent. Uh One of the things that we do in our research trials that that steps up the yield and that's tough, right? You put a bean in the ground and it may sit there 23 weeks before it gets out. You may have to hold it to get it up and you put it through all these tough conditions.
But all of a sudden in the end, you pick up 78, 10 bush or maybe even more in yield.
Put that same bean and warm soil in a starter plot and get a four or five inch height difference from the starter response to the fertility of that bean, but get no yield increase at all. Um Matter of fact, we have quite a few negatives and when we get the bigger taller plant, it isn't uncommon to see that soybean go backwards. So
it's, it's a different, if it's a different cat, when we look at changing the environment probably has more to do with changing yield than um throwing all kinds of micronutrient mixes and everything else at it that you could for a soy or corn plant and get a lot better results.
You mentioned soybean population there. How does the population impact my weed control or how I need to be thinking about weed control
our data and I think most farmers understand it. Our data suggests that population has nothing to do with the yield per se. Meaning that as we used to years ago, plant beans with a drill, you know, at 222 140,000, that was all about weed control and equipment. Uh The old tide drills and stuff that we had back then would leave half the beans on top of the ground. So you had to find them thick. But before a round up and
some of the herbicide options, we planted them thick before weed control.
Uh Today, we have a lot of different options when it comes to managing the weeds. So, um again, the population isn't as critical and we know that as we work on our row spacing plots
all the way down to 100 and 20,000 planted population um, we just don't rattle yield, but at 100 and 20 or less, you're gonna start dealing with more weed pressure, especially in your wide road. So, a situation where, um, that has to be part of the equation when somebody talks about going on down to ultra low populations, sub 100,000 type things, there's gotta be a pretty
significant weed effort or control effort for the weed control because of that late season burst of, especially the tough ones like palmer and, and water hamp out there. So, um now that doesn't mean that you can't uh roll, cultivate them or you can't walk them and some of the things that we used to do years ago for weed control, but that adds a lot of time and expense to it as well
along with that population discussion. Just thinking about spacing both beans and corn.
Have you found that there is, let's say a perfect spacing or does it matter so much by population and year that it's hard to pick out any trends whether it's corn or beans and, and the, the roast spacing on them?
Well, definitely, we, that's one area in soybeans. We probably studied uh the longest uh through the farm journal plot program, for instance, that work goes clear back to 1992.
And um if we're looking at a normal planting window, you're not trying to push the preso as flowering. Uh Our data still suggests that narrowing up the rows is the way to go. Uh, gives us a little better weed control and picking up, you know, four or five bush will yield advantage to closing those rows up a little bit quicker.
Uh, does make a difference whether we're planting a, what we call a drill bean, um, or a bush bean that would go into rows. But, um, holds in there pretty good that, that yield advantage does soften a little when we plant early. Um We give those beans uh almost another month to get the rose closed and stuff.
So we don't see uh as big advantage to the narrow rows um in, in the early planted beans, but we still see the weed control and perform better. So, um, there's no discount for plant and narrow beans uh in a, in an early uh applicant, you know, early planting window. Uh And in some cases, there's still a still a premium there, but it's not quite as high as it would be to the normal planting date.
But uh again, from a wheat control standpoint, that's quite a bit different, right? Compared to a genetically modified or a non GMO bean. The non GMO bean is our tougher challenge uh to manage the weeds because your options are somewhat limited. So while you can focus on early planting and lower plant populations, you got to still manage the weeds and you don't have as many options in the non GMO side. So um, narrow rows, fits there uh, with our customers better and keeping things under control.
What about on the corn side? Uh, thirties versus twenties, fifteens, twins. What have you found?
Um, of course, our biggest market territory would be 30 inch rows and then from there it's kind of split between twin rows and twenties. As the next row spacing, we don't have a lot of 15 inch corn.
Um, and as we narrow up corn rows, um
kind of two reasons for it coming in. And one is that you have some very fertile soil with a good water supply. So either you're dealing with irrigation or deep water table uh or I mean, you're close to the water table and there you're swinging for the fence and narrow rows allows us to uh push those yield goals and go higher. And not, I'm not talking about, you know, 20 bushel higher, but 7 to 10 bushel is pretty common. Uh where we can push it out. The other place is actually the opposite end where you uh
don't have the water supply. Uh And you would like to close those rows up and, and get them closed up a little bit quicker, but to do it at lower plant populations.
But as we study um narrow row, corn and corn populations, um the one thing we have to always keep in mind is is once, once we capture 97% of the light. So if I was to be in your field when it was tasseling. That's the last leaves are out. You got your maximum leaf area index
And I was to squat down and look down the row. I should see about 97% capture. You should be 97% of the ground should be shaded.
And if it is, we can tell with the high amount of accuracy that going up in plant density isn't gonna change yield. Um You're gonna have to get an increase in yield with fungicides or your nutrient program or insecticides, but you're not gonna do it with plant density.
So when we talk about narrow row corn, the major secret or the major thing that you have to think about is leaf architecture.
Um Some of our older genetics are very pendulum in nature. The leaves are horizontal um
with and, and when the uh rows close, they close pretty quick, they maybe even close before uh the tassel gets out
with some of the new genetics. Today, there's a little shorter statured and they're more upright in their leaf architecture. They may never close the row in a wide row. So sunlight may always hit the ground. So as we move into narrow rows, keeping that in mind,
if we're swinging for the fence and we're wanting high yields, we're gonna have to stay more with an upright to semi upright leaf structure uh on that corn. And then that allow us to push our plant population up and push our ear count up. But if we stick with the pendulum architecture, there's just not gonna be any more sunlight. So if you were shading the rows at 32 to 34,030 inch rows, you went to narrow row corn,
took that same hybrid now and pushed it to 38,000. There's no more sunlight to capture and with a high amount of accuracy, I I can almost guarantee you, you're gonna go backwards in yield because there's no more sunlight to capture. And by adding population beyond that point, you just add stress stand problems, the corn gets tall. Um And guys get confused because they translate high population,
the high yield and narrow rows to high yield. And it's both of them work against stand. So again, if we're looking at uh high yield environment, we're gonna be semi upright to upright with our genetics and we probably will push our population. But if we're in moderate to drought stress soil, we're actually going to stay in the semi upright, semi pendulum um area for our corn.
And then we're gonna pull those populations back. So we could be 4-6,000 under where we would have been in a 30" in that case because we can reach vol canopy without putting so much pressure on the soil.
Ken in the time we have left, I want to talk for a moment about tillage and I'll leave it broad. What types of things should we be thinking about with tillage? I know we've got listeners that would be no till to full tillage. Uh What have we learned and what do we need to think about?
Well, again, in soybeans, surprisingly, it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference in our research. Uh We struggle to make tillage pay ahead of a soybean. Um Granted it, they look better, they come out of the ground faster than a no till type environment. Um But that doesn't mean much to the yield at the end to trying to pay for that. These feels a challenge in corn. We push pretty hard for our customer base to get themselves in what we call a vertical format.
Um trying to do uh as little horizontal tillage as possible. Um In this case, keeping it in a vertical format, of course, no till would fit into that strip till would foot in, fit into that. And then there's a lot of tillage tools out here that are vertical um for the guys to, to use so we can do our chisel plowing in the fall and level in a vertical format in the spring. Trying to get the root system to move down.
Eliminating compaction though is probably number one. If you're doing tillage and
80 plus percent of the service calls I go on every year dealing with compaction are actually the ones that are gonna start here this next week or so that first pass in the spring, um, growers get a little gunny and they, they make a move and they, they want a plant but the fields not ready and they know one pass with a sole finisher or disc, we can get it ready. Um, maybe in a half a day or so to plant. And if we're out there planting or running those tools when there's too much moisture,
uh we put in a compaction layer if we run them when they're dry, because they're horizontal tools will put in a density layer and that will give us a little trouble. But compaction layer is that gift that just kind of keeps on giving all season long where if we're too wet, we're in trouble. If we're too dry, we're in trouble. So, um most of the compaction we'll deal with is gonna happen here in the next uh 2 to 3 weeks,
Ken, I always appreciate the time and uh the tips I know I use it on my farm and I hope others do as
well. Glad to be with you today.
Thanks for listening to this week's show. Remember you can hear these shows in a variety of ways at farming the countryside dot com on many local radio stations or your favorite podcast platform. And if you miss one of our shows, just use those platforms or the website to go back and catch other topics of interest. We try to have a variety of guests who provide information, impact in many parts of the ag industry in rural America. So I hope you'll find value in going back and finding some of those podcasts that are of interest to you.
I appreciate you joining me. I'm Andrew mccray. I'll catch you next time on Farming the Countryside.
This edition of Farm in the Countryside has been brought to you by Pivot Biop proven 40 os the nitrogen you need. Now on seed, learn more at pivot bio dot com.
