Farm Horizons, April 2019

Outlook for 2019 crop

By Dave Schwartz
Certified crop advisor, Gold Country Seed

It won’t be long and farmers will be rolling out their planters to begin another cropping season. 2018 was a good growing season for some and then disappointing for others. Almost all growers had enough rainfall but some had far too much which lowered grain yield. So what will 2019 offer? So much depends on weather. We can make all the right management decisions, but if weather doesn’t cooperate, it makes it tough.

On the positive side, we should go into the 2019 cropping season with maximum subsoil moisture. Good crop yields require adequate soil moisture during the critical pollination period in July and early August and subsoil moisture plays an important role in this area. Lawns may brown up in August but corn roots tap deep into this subsoil moisture- as much as five feet. So subsoil moisture is always a plus for crops, especially later in the growing season when moisture demands increase to the level of 0.3 inch per day when corn pollinates. So fields at field capacity for soil moisture last fall should be beneficial to the 2019 crop.

On the negative side, soils were very wet last fall when crops were harvested and tilled. This created ideal conditions for soil compaction. This could come back to haunt our 2019 crop, especially if crops are stressed for moisture. Plant roots have difficulty penetrating a layer of soil compaction. I have scouted many fields in July and August that had areas where plants were stunted. Often times, I would find a layer of compaction down 3 to 6 inches that force roots to move laterally rather than downward toward moisture. So soil compaction could take the top end off of yield in some areas.

Overall, the outlook has probably not changed much since last year with depressed grain prices. Crop budgets are at break even prices at best so growers will need to watch their expenses closely. I can recall situations this past year where spending a few more dollars would have been a good investment. Examples are sidedressing nitrogen in June due to nitrogen leaching out from too much rainfall. Another example would be growers who decided to not spray for soybean aphids when aphid populations exceeded economic thresholds. High soybean aphid populations can decrease soybean yields up to 50%. A University professor once told me in lean years like we are experiencing, that if farmers cut expenses too much, they are in effect planning for a poor crop and that is what they will likely get.

Good corn yields in Minnesota are often times associated with early planting dates so lets hope for a warm April and May that gets our crop off to a good start. Good luck!

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