Agronomy update: timing is everything

Narrator: Hey podcast, thanks for tuning in to today's podcast on agronomy. Chris and Adam have an excellent conversation on what's going on throughout the country and cover almost every agronomic question that we've heard over the last few weeks. Also, Chris mentions a margin enhancement tool while talking to Adam. This is an awesome tool that we have available for making continued management decisions such as fungicide applications, and we'll send it out to anyone if you're interested. You can request the tool by emailing us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. .com. Adam does an excellent job answering many of the questions that we know are on producers' minds. Enjoy.

Chris

Barron: Welcome to the Ag View Pitch, everybody. Today you've got Chris Barron and Adam Brinker. He's a strategic account manager with Corteva, and he's working out of southeast Iowa. And Adam, we, we had a conversation with you here a couple months back, and I wanted to reconnect with and have a little conversation on some of the agronomic topics that are going on here today. You want to kind of give yourself a little reintroduction and, and we can kind of start the conversation on what the weather holds and a few other agronomic topics.

Adam

Brinker: Yeah, sure. Sounds good. Yeah, I'm Adam Brinker. Like Chris said, I work with our strategic accounts across southern Iowa, kind of go about an hour west of Des Moines over to the Mississippi River. And then kind of that Highway 20, Highway 30 area on the north side down to, uh, I'll dip into Missouri just a little bit. So get to see kind of the whole gamut this year on what's going on out there.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, what do you, what are you hearing from your counterparts? Are you hearing much, you know, to the east or anything with some of the challenges your counterparts are going through?

Adam

Brinker: Well, it, it's very pockety, but in general as you've seen in your tours, as you go east it just gets a lot, lot rougher when you cross over that river there. In general, as you go west, things kind of pick up a little bit. I'm going to be with my counterpart from Nebraska later on this week, but in earlier travels of mine, kind of western Iowa and eastern Nebraska, I'd say as a big, as a large area, would be one of the better looking parts of the country right now. But I need to get back over there. That's, that's a little bit old data.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, well, and it's kind of, kind of rhymes with what we've been hearing. You know, go west, it gets better, go east, it gets worse, and kind of been the theme all along. Let's talk a little bit about kind of what the weather holds as we move forward. Dwayne and I've been talking about this, this hot forecast and high temperatures and stuff, and some of these fields are getting close are just starting to pollinate, and we're going to probably have 3 phases of pollination because there was, you know, realistically 3 primary planting dates across the whole entire Corn Belt. So in this first phase of pollination, what, you know, what are some of the watch-outs or some of the concerns that we might have as this hot temperatures are coming our way and, and probably some dry conditions as well?

Adam

Brinker: Right, right. Well, I'm going to back up just a little bit from there. One thing that this heat has done for us is actually it's brought, or it's kind of slowed down disease progression. So the gray leaf spot that we are seeing out there in pockets is actually, it's actually kind of getting slowed down because we don't have the moisture out there. The other thing is what this kind of hotter, drier weather is doing is keeping the storms at bay for a little while until maybe this hurricane pushes up. So a corn is the most brittle in life kind of a week or two before, before tassels come out. So actually the fact we're having this, this hotter, drier weather is probably keeping some of those brittle risks at bay as well. Looking at the different planting dates, you're exactly right.

We had about 3 different succinct plant dates out there, and the April corn is really just getting into pollination. Some of the pre-Easter corn started, started dropping pollen last week. And most of that April corn will be pollinating this week. And maybe by next weekend, we'll see some of that May corn starting to pop tassels as well. We're really looking at that, that early June corn right now. We're about 2 weeks out from pollination. That's just an educated guess at this point based on average temperatures that we should see from here on out.

Chris

Barron: Gotcha. What, what do you think on fungicide? I mean, are growers in your area and some of your counterparts, are you hearing that people are talking about, you know, fungicides? And now, you know, you're talking about we're drying, drying up here and slowing that disease pressure down. Um, what are you hearing on that front?

Adam

Brinker: Well, it kind of goes in pockets, but my opinion is we need to decide if we're going to spray fungicide in the winter And then call an audible if things do fall apart completely, but maybe just push the timing of that fungicide a little earlier or a little later, depending on when we do see disease coming in. It is, uh, since, since our disease pressure is a little bit lighter right now, for the most part, um, pushing it a little bit later, maybe not as big of a need to hit right at full tassel exertion. Right now, just because of the kind of delay in disease progression is probably okay. But a lot of growers are still planning on managing the crop, or at least the best looking fields out there. The problem with fungicide timing is a lot of those early planted fields in April and May have a lot of unevenness out there.

So you may, you might go from full tassel to chest high in the same field. By going just 50 feet across the field. So knowing when to pull the trigger is going to be a little tougher this year.

Chris

Barron: How late can we go with the fungicide? And you know, if we stay dry and we keep stuff at bay, what's the latest that you would think you could go with fungicide from plant development?

Adam

Brinker: Are you talking from a growth stage standpoint or a calendar date on that one? Both. Oh geez. Well, that gets, that kind of becomes operation by operation, field build and what part of the country you're in. Since I go down into northern Missouri a little bit, we can— we have a little excess growing season, a few extra excess GDUs normally, so spraying a little later isn't as much of a worry there. You know, when you're spraying fungicide, you're not adding bushels, you're not adding moisture, you're just keeping the plant alive longer and you're protecting the, the yield potential that that plant has. So by not spraying, because you might think we're going to delay maturity farther, well, you're also kind of, you're making a bet there that, you know, the bushels might not be there as well. Right.

Chris

Barron: What, let's talk about soybeans for a minute. What are you seeing both in your area and from some of your counterparts and what are some of the things that we need to be doing from a management perspective? And then we'll come back to corn on some nitrogen stuff. But on— let's hit soybeans for a minute here since we're on the topic of fungicides.

Adam

Brinker: Yeah, yeah. So on soybeans, most fields are R1 or R2, so beginning bloom or full bloom right now. There's probably a few of those April-planted fields, those pre-Easter soybean fields with some of the shorter season beans that are hitting at R3 this week. So R3 is a pod that is 3/8 of an inch long or longer on one of the 4 uppermost nodes of the plant with a, with a fully developed trifoliate on it. So R3 to R5 is the time we'll want to spray fungicide, insecticide out there on our beans, and we're going to be hitting that ideal timing here in the next couple of weeks. For most fields across the, all southern Iowa, but there's gonna, there could be a few of those very early fields that we're getting right there right now.

From a, from a pest standpoint, there's some Japanese beetles doing some work out there, and we had some thistle caterpillars that I'm sure you saw or heard about a few weeks ago or about a month ago. Well, the second generation of those are starting to do some feeding out there, and that fungicide insecticide timing at R3, R4 is probably going to line up with, with knocking those out fairly well.

Chris

Barron: With all the late planted soybeans, I mean, there's a higher percentage of late planted soybeans, I think, than maybe I've ever seen. And are there any certain special watchouts for that crop being planted so late, or anything we need to really be watching that, that's going to be unique to a quote unquote normal year?

Adam

Brinker: Man, they're just, they're just going to be short. We're going to see some beans that never canopy out there. And my worry with a lot of them is we just, we didn't get enough population out there in some cases. The general trend has been to cut soybean populations. And when we're planting, the whole idea behind planting early is to get more nodes out there because each node has, is a place to put a pod. And Unfortunately on the, these late planted beans, there's nothing we can really correct with what I think is going to be one of the biggest issues. And we didn't get enough plants to get enough nodes out there because when you plant late you just have fewer nodes per plant. And that's going to be, I think, one of our bigger struggles. And then we'll just have to watch the insect pressure as it goes along.

But the biggest thing is don't give up on managing them just because maybe we didn't get them planted at the ideal time.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, that's good comment too, because when we were out east, Shay and I didn't comment on it, but we noticed a few of the soybean fields. You could tell that they were planted probably pushing 200,000 population, and they were definitely better looking. You could tell they were planted later, but that extra population just gave them a little bit more of a boost. That competition growth, you could just see it made an, you know, it's making a difference on how fast those beans were growing. So that's a really good comment, I think, too.

Adam

Brinker: Yeah, the beans just— they're take— they took forever to start growing, it felt like, this year. So there were some beans that were 6, 8 inches tall that were throwing blooms already, and we're just not going to have the height on them, it looks like. But a lot of growing season left to go.

Chris

Barron: Are there any, you know, insects, you know, if we start getting hot and dry, spider mites, any, you know, anything in particular to kind of be watching for, do you think, if we stay hot and dry here for extended period of time on the soybean side.

Adam

Brinker: You just hit it. The, the spider mites are usually the biggest issue if we get hot and dry like this. Haven't seen any yet. Usually when we're hot and dry, we don't see the aphid issues. So that, that's a positive. But the, the spider mites, if we don't get a shower to break things up a little bit in the next week, I'm sure we'll see some stuff down south starting to show some spider mite populations or have a good probability of things like that. Starting to show up.

Chris

Barron: Gotcha. Let's circle back to corn again for a minute. Talk a little bit about nitrogen. We saw in our trip, you know, in last week when we went over to Ohio, just a ton of discolored corn, unevenness and stuff. But a lot of it I think was due just to, well, lack of oxygen for one. But the other thing is just, just the nitrogen, you know, probably denitrification a lot of areas. What's your thought on, you know, coming back here late with some additional nitrogen? Talk a little bit about, about that and what, what you're seeing in that arena.

Adam

Brinker: Well, here at Pioneer, we have, uh, in-circa nitrogen modeling. So I've run a lot of different scenarios out there looking at different, uh, forms of nitrogen put on at different timings. And really, even though we got excessive rainfall, A lot of that rain came when we were pretty cool, and I need to run some, some more simulations to keep an eye on it here now that we're, we're a little bit farther into it. But those earlier modeling actually said that, yeah, we lost some nitrogen, but we're probably gonna, gonna be okay yet. I was a little bit surprised with that, but again, each— that was just the few fields that I ran it on. Each field topography differences, there's going to be differences for, for everybody out there. So, um, it's really a field-by-field issue.

So, um, if you have any questions, get a hold of your local Pioneer sales professional and they can help you with some of that.

Chris

Barron: Okay, you bet. What, uh, what do you think as far as maturity on the corn, you know, with all these late planted fields and stuff. A lot of people did switch to some earlier hybrids and that type of thing along the way. Um, how concerned are you guys from what you're seeing with growers making it to normal frost date and being safe? I mean, if we have an early freeze, I know a lot of growers are pretty concerned about, you know, a normal freeze is probably 2 weeks too soon for a lot of growers. Are you seeing similar concerns or what's your thought on just getting this crop mature? I mean, we're maxing out GDUs right now. As long as we keep doing that, I guess.

Adam

Brinker: So yeah, we're on average here in central Iowa, we're grabbing about 25 GDUs a day through the month of July. Here recently, we've been grabbing some days closer to 30. So every, every few extra we can pick up in a day, whether that's 2 or 5, it all helps a little bit. With a normal free— with a normal frost date, we could have some issues on some of this later planted corn, but we got to remember when we planted late, like when I say late, I'm talking more of the June stuff, those hybrids are shortening up the GDUs they need to reach flowering and reach maturity. So that's going to help us quite a bit in itself. And we planted shorter season products a lot of times when we were planting very late like that. So really, I think we're going to be okay on a lot of this corn if we have an average or slightly later than average frost date. But you never know.

The problem is that frost date can swing either direction by 2 or 3 weeks. And that's what we'll, that's what we'll be monitoring. I've only been in this industry for, I guess, not as long as some others. And 2009 is my most recent memory of seeing one of those early, early frosts with a cool wet harvest going on. And I just remember some, some spongy cobs and some things we had to deal with when we do hit a— if we would happen to hit another year where we had a hard frost or killing frost before black layer. When we get a hard frost after black layer and get cool, we tend to dry down slow, but it's, it's it's when that killing frost comes in before black layer that the plant just doesn't have time to senesce properly.

Chris

Barron: Some of the concerns that, that I think growers have that I continue to hear is, you know, with the fungicide application on some of this late planted corn, is there a risk of extending the, you know, the date that that hybrid is going to be mature and then You know, are we putting ourselves at more risk or is it a situation where, you know, the disease is going to take enough bushels away that that risk is worth it? Talk to me for a second about kind of what, what your thoughts are on, on the concern of should I or shouldn't I spray fungicide?

Adam

Brinker: Right, right. Well, I think we got— that's going to be a field-by-field decision. We've got to look at back to the basics on, okay, which environments are going to have the most disease pressure, you know, corn on corn, higher residue, things like that. Fuller season products, since they have a longer grain fill period, usually respond more to fungicide than our shorter season products. But we got to look at what our yield potential is. There's some fields out there that were planted fairly early in April or early May that still have our, you know, 200 or, you know, somewhere in the mid-200s on yield potential. But then we get into some of these other situations. I saw some replant within a field You know, we had April planted and June planted in the same field. I was looking at last week, and that June planted corn was rolled up tight and about knee high.

You know, if there's a whole field that looks like that, it's— we're way, way off from fungicide timing anyway. So we just got to hold off on that and see what it looks like later and see if we have the, see if we have the field that looks like we need to do something with it. If, if on average, we see a 7 to 8 bushel response to fungicide. We got to look at, okay, does that 7 to 8 bushels, that's going to be somewhat a percentage as well. So, you know, if we're looking at 150 bushel corn, that's a little different equation than if we're looking at 200+ bushel corn. So it really comes down to field by field, but you got to remember again, when we're spraying fungicide, we're not actually adding bushels. We're protecting the yield potential that's out there.

So if you, if you spray half of a field with fungicide and it does pick, it does hold a few points of moisture more than the part of the field that you didn't spray, you kept your corn from dying prematurely. So that usually adds some bushels as well. Um, at the same time, there's going to be a little more moisture with that because you kept it greener for longer.

Chris

Barron: Right. And just to make a comment at Ag View Solutions. We do have a tool and I just sent it to you as well, Adam, and we'll have a, we have a margin enhancement calculator that growers can kind of run the numbers and see that, you know, at least get some numbers on it. And like we've always said with the Ag View Pitch, we're really not trying to give any recommendations here, but we're just trying to bring a good perspective and, and bring information so that, you know, growers can, can make the best decisions and try to get the the most amount of information and high-quality information in front of everybody as we can. Adam, as we kind of wrap up here, any final thoughts or anything, questions I haven't asked, or challenges or issues or anything out there that you're seeing that, that, that you can think of that we haven't discussed that we should touch on yet?

Adam

Brinker: No. Well, I guess the one thing, just back to pollination. Pollination for corn usually takes about 5 to 8 days. So we don't want 100-degree days through that entire time period. But even if we just have a few days that are a little, little warmer than we want, we're still probably going to pollinate. What I'm probably a little more worried about is the 2 weeks after silking. That's when we tend to start aborting those kernels that, that did, that did pollinate. And we can get a little prematurely excited if we start counting kernels long shortly after pollination. So I'm really going to look a little bit more at the weather after pollination wraps up and what those next 2 weeks look like, and I think that's going to have a lot of effect on our kernel count out there.

Chris

Barron: That's great information. What, uh, um, as we look at the heat, um, what, what do you think, you know, 10, how many, you know, how many days? I guess I'm trying to think how I want to ask the question. How many How many days after that? I mean, you just kind of keep watching it and you can just kind of see how the ears aborting kernels along the way.

Adam

Brinker: Right, right. So most of the kernels are aborted during R2 and R3. So that's about, that's several, you know, a couple weeks after, right, actually. So yeah, we'll just have to, again, don't get out there too early. I guess when you're looking at the weather, Again, it takes several days in a row over, you know, 100 degrees, I believe, to— this is going from memory— to knock, you know, pollen down and actually make it not viable. So we'll probably be okay there. It's just when we start getting too many nights not getting below that 73 or so degree mark is when we start burning up energy in that plant just to try to respire properly and not cool down like we want it to. That's when we can start seeing some issues here.

So Again, a lot of this early corn is kind of in that critical time, and we'd like to probably see a drink and a little cool down here at some point, but we'll probably get through pollination okay.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, yeah, I didn't do a very good job of answer— asking that question, but it was— you answered what I didn't ask, which was the nighttime temperature, the impact of the nighttime temperatures being high, um, you know, how much of an effect that has, maybe even more so than the daytime temperatures.

Adam

Brinker: Yep, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln put out a neat piece showing how much water a plant needs per day, and then by growth stage, and then what that potential yield loss could be based on that. And they, they're showing from VT to R1, they're saying we're using almost a third of an inch a day, and they say yield loss of up to 8%, uh, yield loss per day with stress during that period. Now the thing is, what, what are they calling stress? It's fairly natural for a corn plant to, to roll up a little bit during the day with some heat, but what's causing that? Is it just, is it avoiding some of the heat, or do we actually have root development issues? We're not getting enough water. When are we rolling up and when are we unrolling there? It's not just as cut and dried as did the plants roll up today.

Chris

Barron: Gotcha. Hey Adam, thanks a lot for your time today. Do you have an email or a way somebody, if anybody has a specific question we didn't ask or anything that they could get in touch with you?

Adam

Brinker: Yeah, sure. I guess first I think talking to someone local is probably the best way to go about it, but my email is adam.brinker@pioneer.com. If someone would like to get a hold of me about something or has some questions about what's going on kind of in south central or southeast Iowa. But again, talking with your agronomist or someone locally can probably help you out better on your, on your immediate local issues.

Chris

Barron: Great advice. And again, with the Ag View Pitch, we want to just make sure everybody is getting their questions answered. And so if you have questions, if there's things we didn't bring bring up from the agronomy side of things, please let us know and we can get in touch with the right people to get some good answers and, and have some good discussion on things. And again, Adam, thanks a lot for your time today. We really appreciate it.

Adam

Brinker: Yep, thanks for having me.

Chris

Barron: You bet. And again today, thanks for everybody joining us on the Ag View Pitch, and we will catch you next time.

Narrator: Thanks again for listening, podcast. And if you're interested in the tool, be sure to email us and we will get it sent over as soon as possible. Again, the email is cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. A-R-R-O-N at agviewsolutions.com. We will catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch.