Crop Production

We have been receiving reports since corn harvest began this fall about an unusual phenomenon: yields of the outside 8 to 24 rows on the south or west edges of corn fields show lower or much lower yields than corn farther into the field. The damage tends to be relatively uniform down or across the field, and is on field edges that border a soybean field, road, ditch, or another short-growing crop (such as forage legumes or grasses) other than corn.…

The 2013 growing season in Illinois was wet early with delayed crop planting, good rainfall in June and July, mostly cool conditions in July, and little rainfall in August and September, with some high temperatures in late August and in September. With late planting and cool weather at times in mid-summer, seedfillling began only in mid-August, 10 days to 2 weeks later than normal, and took place during a period of very little rainfall. Our expectation for such a season,…

The Illinois State Water Survey weather recording site in Champaign near the South Farms provided the following rainfall totals (in inches) in 2013: May – 4.65; June – 5.33; July – 3.47; August – 0.49; September – 0.50. The dry weather along with high temperatures in late August into September – it reached 98 degrees on August 31 and again on September 10 – had many of us believing that yields would be lowered. I was also hoping that irrigation in a study we conducted here might bring us 300-bushel yields by preventing such a decline.…

Corn and soybean harvest in Illinois stood at 5 and 1 percent, respectively, on September 22, 2013. These are behind the 5-year averages, and far behind the 51 percent of the corn crop harvested by this date in 2012. Using 5-year averages may be reasonable, but corn harvest progress by October 1 ranged from 4 percent to 71 percent over the past five years, so “average” does not describe “typical” very well.
Harvest of both corn and soybean have ramped up in Illinois the last week of September,…

Soybean planting was very late in Illinois in 2013; it was early June before 50 percent of the crop was planted, and well into July by the time planting was completed. Even so, the crop condition ratings were good by mid-season, with some 70 percent of the crop rated good or excellent in mid-July.
With the late planting and some cool temperatures in July, soybean flowering and pod-setting started late, with half the crop flowering by July 21,…