The 2021 Drought and Corn Yield Potential?

Jay Zielske Agronomist with Pioneer in the Mankato area was my guest on today's AM Minnesota Program. We spent the whole program discussing the corn yield potential given all the "curve balls" Mother Nature threw us this year. By the way, Jay will be my guest on next Tuesday's AM Minnesota program and then we will focus on the bean crop.

With all the hot days this summer we are well ahead of normal in growing degree units. In fact in a couple weeks much of the corn crop will be mature. That means the corn will dry down very quickly in the field and we may see many farmers harvesting corn before beans this year. Jay said that would be a good plan because stalk and shank quality will likely be questionable because of drought stress. Burning a little propane will likely cost a lot less than the cost of crop and harvest losses because of a wind!

Click on the link and listen to Jay on today's AM Minnesota Program. Also, Jay and coworkers from Pioneer Monday did a crop tour looking at new corn hybrids in test plots over a pretty big area so you can hear what they found for corn yield potential.