Crop Production

Although my post last week reflected the current optimism about yield prospects for the 2016 Illinois corn crop, there has been some recent discussion about unfilled ear tips and whether or not this might mean lower yields than the appearance of the crop leads us to believe.
Corn ears with kernels missing at the outer end of the ear are often said to have “tip-back.” The term is a little obscure, but the idea is that the end of the cob has been exposed by lack of kernels there,…

Corn planting in Illinois has gotten into gear over the past week, with 12 percent of the state’s crop planted by April 17. That’s close to the planting pace of a year ago, and is behind the 5-year average only because that average includes 2012, when nearly half of the state’s corn crop was planted by mid-April. Illinois corn yield averaged 105 bushels per acre in 2012, while in 2014, the year with the record-high corn yield of 200 bushels,…

The University of Illinois is part of a large, multi-state research project funded by the North Central Soybean Research Program (funded by state checkoff programs) to look at effects of weather, soils, and management on soybean yields.
As part of this project, we need to gather basic information on at least 500 soybeans fields around Illinois for each of the crop years 2014 through 2017. These data will go into a large database that will be used to take a look at how management affects yields in a given soil type and with a certain weather pattern.…