A Shame to Chop Such a Good Sweet Corn Crop

Yesterday afternoon I went out to the farm, hooked up the stalk chopper and began chopping my sweet corn field. Last Saturday afternoon I got a call from my field man at Birds Eye Foods telling me they had to bypass my sweet corn. It had gotten too mature so they had no choice. They harvested a couple of passes in the field, weighed it and dumped it on the edge of the field. Then they measured how many acres they picked to calculate the yield. I will get paid for the estimated yield even though it was not harvested. In the contract there is a clause that states Birds Eye can deduct up to 5 percent of all farmers payment and put it into a "pool" that is used to pay for bypassed acres. I have paid into the "pool" for many years and this year I guess it was my turn to get some of that money back.

Even though I will get paid it was hard to destroy the best sweet corn crop I have ever had. When Birds Eye plans for the year they budget or estimate a sweet corn yield of 7 tons an acre. They have had a few fields yield 9 tons, a couple hit 10 tons, they even had one hit 11 tons an acre! They could not process that much sweet corn so they end up bypassing some fields. I thought of Second Harvest Heartland, which supplies food to area food shelves. I was interviewing Tony Manns with Second Harvest Heartland a couple of years ago and he told me one time they harvested a sweet corn field and distributed it to food shelves in a number of states. By the time I got the word from Birds Eye the sweet corn was starting to dent. I did not think anyone would want to eat that!