Ready, set…plant corn!
By Jonathan Eisenthal
Last Wednesday was the earliest allowable date for planting corn in most of Minnesota under federal crop insurance guidelines, and conditions for many farmers favored starting right away. The USDA estimated that 3% of Minnesota’s corn acres were planted in the week ending April 14.
“I personally have 10% of my corn acres planted,” Pipestone-area farmer Clayton Johnson said Tuesday. “I would say the USDA is accurate, that 3% of corn acres got planted this last week, based on what I saw in our area. This is about two weeks earlier than we would normally plant. Conditions were perfect. I planted a (normally) wetter farm that was completely dry, and I was able to plant every acre, while the last few years, we had a wet spot to go around.”
Not everyone got out of the chute this week.
“I saw the cold snap ahead in the forecast and decided to hold off,” said Bryan Biegler who farms in Lake Wilson, near Marshall. “We’ll see how the weather goes. If things warm up and dry out, we may get started early next week. But I did see of number of guys out there getting rolling.”
Biegler is excited to be taking part in a demonstration of a high-speed planter manufactured by Swedish company Vaderstad Industries. At 9 miles per hour, he can plant 60 acres in an hour and wrap up his spring planting in about 2 ½ weeks.
Angela Guentzel, who farms in the Mankato area, agreed that people were getting off to an early start this year. “Usually, we’re one of the first ones getting out there, but we saw a number of people in the area planting in the last few days. We got out and planted a few fields. Just enough to make sure everything is working right, but we didn’t really get started. Late April is our sweet spot.”
Last week, University of Minnesota Extension corn agronomist Jeff Coulter predicted that even in the central and northern tier of Minnesota, corn producers would probably already have a field ready to plant.
He predicted that some farmers would wait on a lot of their acres until this week’s forecasted cold front passes but that a good number of farmers would start planting fields that were ready before the rain.
“Then, they might wait and see what happens,” he said. “[This past weekend was] a little window where they could get some acres in, and get a jump on things now, with what looks like fairly minimal risk. … [This] Thursday through Saturday, there will be lows in the 30s, but it looks like daytime temperatures will be high enough so that the soil temperature at two inches depth is going to be buffered. It’s not going to fluctuate as much as the air temperature.”
According to Coulter the biggest early season planting risk is something called imbibitional chilling injury. Within two days of planting, a seedling is absorbing the moisture it needs to germinate. At this point, the material of the seed is not flexible, and if subjected to freezing temperatures, cell membranes can crack. Cell constituents ooze out and pathogens attack the seed at that site. The result would be poor and uneven emergence of the corn—the farmer may need to replant, because the stand would yield poorly. But Coulter believes many places have passed that risk at this point.
Waiting too long to plant has risks of its own.
“Most farmers have already chosen hybrids that are full season maturity for their location, so they are going to take advantage of the early start,” Coulter said. “Given that many locations in Minnesota have experienced one to three consecutive years of drought, with soils dry in a lot of places, there is a good chance that some areas will experience drought again. Getting the crop planted early can help alleviate the risk for drought. You get the crop to go through the pollination period before the drought stress sets in.”
Corn planted early has roots that can delve for moisture and reach the subsoil where a supply awaits.
“Where it’s dry already in some areas, it’s likely we will see drought when the plants are reaching mid-vegetative state, and later, unless they pick up timely, well-distributed, and abundant rainfall. It just seems like there will be more drought this year. We don’t know how bad it’s going to be, but the drought of recent years sets it up. Farmers who can plant a little earlier may be able to escape some of that drought impact on their yield.”
The USDA estimates that American farmers will plant 90 million acres to corn this year, down from 94.6 million acres last year. Minnesota farmers planted 8.6 million acres to corn last year, which represents about a third of the state’s farmland.
