Dr. Charles Hurburgh is a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering specializing in grain quality at Iowa State University, Ames (515-294-8629), where he heads the department’s Grain Quality Laboratory and is widely recognized as a leading expert in the area. The following article is based on a June 3 online webinar presented by Hurburgh and a subsequent phone interview with Grain Journal in mid-July.
The 2019 corn and soybean crops yielded better than expected given the difficult weather conditions we had during that year. The incredible rains throughout the spring led to the latest planting season on record.
Then, with the exception of the Dakotas and central Nebraska, fortune smiled on us. A period of outstanding growing weather in the middle of the summer helped us out. Fall was wet again, but a period of dry weather in mid- to late September put a finish on the crop. It was not as late a harvest as it could have been.
That September was a little warmer and dryer for the Western Corn Belt than it was in the Eastern Corn Belt, resulting in slightly lower harvest moisture on corn in the west.
The overall effect of the weather was a high degree of variability in all quality factors, with some deviations as high as we’ve ever seen, and despite the breaks, it was still one of the latest-maturing crops we’ve ever seen. All season, the crop good-to-excellent (GTE) ratings tracked below average. It looked as if we were headed for very high moisture levels at harvest and a 10% to 15% yield reduction.
In terms of quality, we had lower test weight and lower protein, though again, a little better in the west than in the east. Protein was low enough to make it more expensive to make up for it with soybean meal in livestock rations. Starch content was high, and the kernels were soft. This was a crop with low storability.
The problem was made worse by LP distribution problems in the fall, so a lot of corn couldn’t be dried properly. With the later harvest, we had to cool corn below freezing rather than drying. This corn was prone for spoilage, especially in steel bins subject to heating in sunlight and on farm where producers have no grain temperature monitoring.
Mycotoxin content, in particular vomitoxin, was high enough to issue a warning about feeding the corn to hogs, maybe diverting it to poultry or cattle, which are less susceptible to that toxin. That was particularly true for distiller’s grains, where mycotoxins concentrate in the ethanol production process.
The 2019 soybean crop also saw a lot of variability in terms of seed size and quality. The moderate September weather protected the crop from further deterioration, except in the wet areas in the north. Weed problems led to high levels of FM (foreign material). Oil levels were favorable, but protein was lower than average. Soy meal protein maxed out at around 47%.
We’ll be seeing a lot of blue eye mold on 2019 crops that haven’t moved yet. That grows at low relative humidity, 65% or under, so aeration doesn’t have much effect on it. Even dry corn in warm weather has an equilibrium humidity around 65%. Blue eye happens in summers where storage life has been used up earlier.
We planted all the corn we could in 2020. Planting conditions this spring were as good as imaginable in most areas from the far northern states. We were headed for a record crop. USDA projected a 2020 crop of nearly 16 billion bushels of corn and more than 4 billion bushels of soybeans. The most recent USDA estimate had 83% GTE on corn, the highest ever for that time of year.
Then the weather started throwing curve balls at us. Acres in the north didn’t get planted. Drought has developed in some areas of the Corn Belt. This started over the Eastern Corn Belt, with some areas entering the third stage of drought development (D2 – Severe Drought.) It’s not certain we’re going to see a record crop.
If we don’t get rain, that 83% GTE number will drop like a stone. Recently, a significant area of D2 has developed over central and western Iowa. In the parts of the Corn Belt that remain dry and have above-normal heat, crop maturity will advance quickly. That could result in an early harvest.
After the 2020 crop is harvested, the general thinking was that there would be 800 million bushels without a home – that is, unsold when all the good-quality storage capacity has been taken up. Exports do little to reduce that number, since those bushels must move to a port first, and they generally are scheduled for shipment during a specific month or portion of a month. Increased feed and ethanol usage does more to reduce that number.
However, if yields end up being reduced by harvest, that figure also will come down.
Any 2019 grain that remains in storage should be moved out ASAP. The quality is not good, and any storage life that the crop had has been used up completely. Recent movements on-farm are coming in at 17% or 18% moisture with no shelf life remaining.
Under current conditions, it looks like harvest will have a relatively early start in 2020. In my home state of Iowa, that could be the week after Labor Day. I usually present a pre-harvest outlook in September at a GEAPS Greater Iowa chapter meeting in September, but this year, it could be at the start of harvest.
If we had a 16-billion-bushel corn crop, as USDA originally forecast, that would translate into a carryover in 2021 of 3.1 billion bushels, somewhat predicated on demand. Soybean carryover would be 246 million bushels, relatively small compared to corn. Recent revisions reduce crop size to around 15 billion bushels and carryover to around 2.6 billion bushels.
So here are my tips for handling the 2020 crop going into harvest:
Reprinted from Grain Journal July/August 2020 Issue