Harvest Standability

BY Dairyland Seed Agronomy Team

2024 Harvest

It isn’t harvest unless there is an interesting challenge, and this fall is no different. Fall got off to a dry start and now many of our clientele are dealing with dodging rain events. As we all know, this is not just an issue for corn harvest, but especially true for soybeans. Are there management options we can look at in the future to help us to manage harvest better? Below are considerations that may help.

First and foremost, take good look at your corn and soybean maturities.

Are we getting a good spread of maturity on your farm operation? Obviously, we can’t harvest the whole farm in a day. So why have it all ready or not ready at the same time? This is especially true of planting earlier maturing hybrids and varieties. Having a few fields to harvest a week early may provide keys benefits including marketing options, early start on lime and fertilizer applications and tiling jobs. It also gives a chance to fine tune our harvest system just a little sooner.

In the past, there was a heavy yield penalty for planting early maturity products. With today’s advances in crop breeding, that differential is narrowing. There does exist a balancing act between maximizing our photosynthetic opportunities in a growing season and shortening up crop maturities.

As many of you may have read in our 2022 Product and Agronomy Research (PAR) report, we investigated a couple early harvest options for soybeans. One was the above-mentioned shortened maturities; the other was using herbicides to desiccate soybeans to facilitate earlier harvest. In this management option we can gain yield and swing harvest up to a week earlier. A week of soybean harvest in September can certainly make a difference in late October trying to finish soybean harvest in less-than-ideal conditions.

From a corn harvest standpoint, our agronomy team investigated yield losses due to delayed harvest. We did note a yield penalty for delayed harvest and field drying in our research. A concern noted with that research was the cost of commercial drying versus on-farm drying. Could we look at our corn hybrids and jump a few days earlier in maturity on a percentage of your acres? This would still give you an earlier start and mitigate some of the drying costs.

Check out our website for the 2022 Product and Agronomy and Research report for further details on these studies and others.