Corn harvest will hit full swing over the next two weeks, however a short list of growers actually got started during the last week in July.  Comments about what has been harvested range from ‘decent-I was pleasantly surprised’ to ‘terrible-this is my worst year ever’ with yields from around 30 bushels per acre up to close to 290 (very early March planted irrigated).  Variable is probably the best way to describe most non-irrigated fields.  Variable ear size, variable seed moisture, variable drydown, variable yields.  No reports of aflatoxin at this point which is good considering the conditions the crop grew in.  Standability continues to be a big concern as we have been getting some thunderstorms and winds gusting above 20 mph this week.

I drove past a field in Madison county that was shelled about 8 days ago and I can already see a carpet of volunteer corn that either got flung out of the combine or lost at the header.  Setting the combine to minimize loss is going to be extremely important this year.  It may mean constant adjustments to match the conditions in each field, but if this year’s corn prices don’t justify slowing down and doing a more efficient job I don’t know what does.

Finding an average of two kernels per square foot or a full sized ear on the ground is equivalent to 1 bushel of corn lost per acre.  Try and figure out where the loss is coming from:  header, thrasher, etc. and make one single adjustment at a time on the equipment until you seem to be going in the right direction.  In fields with a lot of variability in ear size, doing a really efficient job thrashing the larger sized ears makes more sense than giving up some of the better grain in order to try to capture the tiniest of nubbins.