Crop Production

Very little corn or soybean planting took place in Illinois over the past week, and while planting progress is not far behind average for the end of the first week of May, crop development is starting to lag as temperatures remain cool. Crop emergence has been slow, with only less than half of the corn crop that was planted by the end of April emerged by May 7.
One of the most visible consequences of the cool weather has been the poor corn crop color of recent days.…

In January I posted about the large project we are part of, funded by the North Central Soybean Research using soybean checkoff funds, to gather information on some 500 soybean fields in Illinois for each crop year from 2014 through 2017. The response has not been as enthusiastic as I had hoped, so I’m again calling for help on this. With 10 million acres of soybean in Illinois, 500 fields is less than a quarter of a percent of fields.…

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,…