Corn and soybeans: how do we finish the growing season?

Narrator: And it all comes down to this. 2 on, 2 out, bottom of the 9th. The Farmers lead by 1. Full count, here comes the play at the plate, and it's the Ag View Pitch!

Chris

Barron: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch, and today what we want to do is have a little conversation on some of the agronomic concerns that we're seeing in the corn and soybean crop. Late planting, some disease issues, maybe some insect challenges, and then is this crop going to get finished? And so today I've got with me kind of a special guest, Eric Zumbau, and he's an agronomist with Pioneer. And so Eric, I'll have you go ahead and introduce yourself, and then we'll kind of get into a few questions here on the agronomy side of things.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, I'm Eric Zumbau. I'm a field agronomist for Pioneer covering southeast Iowa. So as far as the geography, it would be 6 counties east of Iowa City and Cedar Rapids area here in Iowa. Been with Pioneer now 12 years and give a lot of agronomic support to our sales rep and agronomy topics with our territory managers and sales reps within that area and growers in that area as well.

Chris

Barron: Gotcha. So I guess, you know, you, you talk to a lot of your counterparts too, and this is going to be going out to listeners and in a lot of states. And so a lot of the information we'll talk about today kind of basically applies north to south, east to west, realistically, on the corn and soybeans. But one of the things that that I hear often, and you and I were talking about this here before we started the podcast a little bit about there really being 3 planting windows. You know, there was a little bit of stuff that kind of went in in April, but you know, for the corn and the beans, just the way this challenging weather was in the spring, we had this early window somewhere in that May timeframe or through, you know, through April or through May, excuse me, and then a lot planted in June.

So those 3 windows, April, May, June, talk a little bit about kind of some of the things that you guys are seeing, you know, across the, across the country and in your area as well.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, to your point, yeah, we had, like you say, basically 3 planting windows, and I think that was obviously those planting windows varied across the Corn Belt. For us, it was kind of late April, early May, then we had about 3 days in mid-May, and then everything else went into June. And so obviously the common denominator there is we didn't do a lot of field work in the fall, and because we were so wet in the fall, so present a lot of challenges coming into this spring with the late planting season as well, just trying to get all that work done as far as tillage and getting anhydrous on, which got kind of balled us up there a little bit too, getting it, getting that kind of work done and then getting behind it with the planter and getting the crop in when you know you had rain in the forecast for the next 5 to 10 or 15 days ahead of that.

So, so just all those challenges coming in the spring just presented a lot of issues as far as around compaction, just nitrogen management. Or did we change our program? Did we stay the course with anhydrous ammonia? Did we go more to a liquid program and accommodate the program program that way. And then also, just, are those ideal conditions? What were those conditions like when the planter went through the field? You know, was it perfect, or was there, you know, some wet pushing a little bit? Did we see some sidewall compaction, which we did? Um, consistency, depth, and that sort of thing across some of that compacted ground. So, so yeah, definitely challenging spring, and a lot of common denominators there when you talk to my counterparts across the Corn Belt that obviously it's kind of one for the books as far as the challenges we came into.

Chris

Barron: So yeah, so I guess what I'm, what I'm wondering, and I think a lot of people are, is, you know, with those dates, you know, number one, how's that going to impact yield? You know, what's this going to mean dollars and cents-wise? The other thing, you know, is, you know, what, what's your thoughts, you know, on maturity? So let's hit the yield thing first. You know, what are, what are some of the issues you think that are impacting yield with this later planted stuff versus some of the earlier planted stuff on corn specifically first.

Eric

Zumbach: So I think the big thing is when you look at some of that, at least in the area I work, some of the later in— I guess across the Corn Belt as far as that goes— if you look at some of that later planted corn, or April planted corn, excuse me, you know, we were pretty cool, pretty wet for the first part of May. And so really our mid-May planted corn and our late April planted corn emerged fairly similar timeframe from that standpoint. So we just didn't accumulate a lot of heat units. And so So from that standpoint, you know, a lot of that corn that's planted late April right now, we're about— took about 3 to 4 weeks to merge, and we're about 30 days to black layer at this point here in the end of August. So we got about another month here yet on that corn to get it to black layer, assuming it obviously came out of the ground uniformly. Forget the GDUs and keep pushing that along.

So if you look at the most of that June planted corn, which is a pretty good chunk of in our area, we had Oh, we're about approximately about 45 to 50 days to black layer at this point. So that's going to get us right into that window of our average freeze date in this geography. So certainly going to be touch and go here, but we need to turn the furnace up here in our environment and keep us cooking along here before we get us to the end of the growing season.

Chris

Barron: So yeah, I think, I think that's a little bit of a, of a scary part of it for some of our growers to the north that have a lot of those acres that are planted a little later. And so I guess, you know, when we look at that, let's, let's make some assumptions that we catch that frost and we don't quite have this crop mature completely yet. And we're sitting there with, say, you know, half milk line or, you know, three-quarter milk line. Can you kind of talk through each of those stages and kind of what the impact might be on the corn side of things? You can probably reach it from here.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, and so if you look at the— obviously certainly that concern of getting an early frost. So if we look at corn that's, for example, at half a milk line, if we get a killing frost at that point, you know, our grain moisture at that time period is about 40 to 45% moisture. So from a yield loss standpoint, really we need another 200 growing degree units when we're at that window to get us to physiological maturity, and we can expect about a 12 to 15% yield loss at that point, we're in that half milk line. So if we get sooner than— earlier than that, say we're at a quarter milk line, you know, that's about a 25 to 30% yield loss. And so it's just gonna matter how we finish this crop out with heat units and where we can push that along. So obviously, those yield loss gets less as the farther along that crop's in maturity.

But we even just look at just on the other side of it, a 3/4 inch milk line, grain moisture is about that 35 to 40%. And we're looking about a 5 to 6% yield loss. So, so longer we can push this, um, um, kill and freeze back a little bit, it's certainly going to help us put more kernel depth in that, in that ear and help us on grain quality and test weight and that sort of thing as well.

Chris

Barron: So yeah, and it looks like some of these hybrids are kind of getting in line. Even the fuller season ones are— it seems like they're almost catching up sort of to some of the earlier hybrids. Is that something you guys are seeing too? And And I mean, look, you know, it's looking like we need maybe 30 days in a lot of cases, you know, to get the crop mature regardless if you go north, south, east, or west. We're all kind of in a pretty similar boat. It's just that, that frost threat.

Eric

Zumbach: Right, right. And, you know, actually on the other side of that too is, you know, we run a lot of scenarios with our hybrids and you look at some work that Purdue and Ohio State have done in the past about our hybrids sense that we got a shorter growing season, so they speed that process up to maturity. Maturity a little bit more. So, so a hybrid that's, um, roughly about 25 growing degrees to black layer planted on May 15th, you look at that delayed planting, um, work that was done, take about 2,256 units growing degrees to get that hybrid to black layer. So, right, so it's going to push it, and that's good. That's our advantage here coming into this shorter growing season, that these hybrids are catching up. So you're kind of seeing these hybrids kind of line up a little bit closer in some of those cases, uh, as far as how it's coming into the late, late in the season here.

Chris

Barron: So Yeah. So for, for a minute here, let's talk a little bit about, you know, uh, dry down and test weight, right? So if we shut that plant down, what's that do to the kernel and how's that going to affect us from a dry down standpoint and a test weight standpoint?

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, certainly from a dry down standpoint, if we're getting that crop, um, obviously killed from a freeze and not to physiological maturity at a natural rate, You know, it makes a little challenge, more of a challenge because we got a kernel that isn't finished off. And, you know, I'm not a grain drying expert, but it's certainly going to create a lot of issues as far as just getting that chaffy light grain through a dryer and get it dried down to the point where we need it to. And I go back to some of the conversations I've had with growers back in mid-'70s where we had a frost in September, I believe, the last time, and the challenges they presented back then was trying to get that crop dry. Test weight was really light, really light fluffy corn.

Chris

Barron: I think they say 1973, some of the growers in that year, they said you know, 45, 45, 45, 45% moisture, 45-pound test weight.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, yeah, I believe I've heard that same comment.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, exactly.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris

Barron: So 45% moisture and that's hard to dry, right?

Eric

Zumbach: Exactly. So yeah, from the drying standpoint, that'll be our challenge. But, um, I'm being on the optimistic side here. We're gonna get her black layer before killing. Yeah. And, uh, we won't have to have that conversation at the end of the day. But certainly something, and we'll get some information out have to, but we're certainly prepared to deal with some of those issues because we know they're gonna be out there this year.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, to finish up on the corn a little bit, you know, in my travels I've seen some top dieback starting to show up across the area. We're seeing some obvious nitrogen deficiency. You know, you look on one side of the road when you're driving down the road and you can see a real deep green field, and some of it might be maturity, but on the other hand, you know, I have stopped and looked at a few of these fields and you get in there and you look and it's just symptomology purely of nitrogen deficiency. And so are you guys seeing a lot of that and what do you think, you know, what are we gonna maybe see for some yield hit on some of that?

Eric

Zumbach: So I guess when we start seeing nutrient deficiencies show up, thing we got to know is what's going on underneath the ground. So is it the fact that we lost nitrogen or maybe we got a restricted root that didn't get down to those nutrients. Compaction, sidewalk compaction, different things like that, rootworm feeding. And so just take a shovel out with you if you got some, you know, some concerns around that and dig some roots just to understand, you know, truly what that, what's setting that problem up as far as a nitrogen standpoint. But certainly when you look at this year with the amount of rainfall that we had, when we look at spring anhydrous ammonia, the one thing we did have going for us this spring is that our soils didn't warm up as quick, so we didn't convert that ammonium nitrogen into nitrate as quick.

The downside with that too is when we went with the liquid programs, the 28% nitrogen, 32% nitrogen, roughly about 25% of that is in the nitrate form the minute it hits the ground. So that was already vulnerable to leaching.

Chris

Barron: So we may have lost a bunch of that.

Eric

Zumbach: We lost a bunch of that, you know, so we're seeing some of that show up in those fields. But first off, when you walk out in the field and think nitrogen deficiency, you know, I ran out of nitrogen, take a shovel and dig some roots and just understand underground what is happening there to really truly understand, is it truly nitrogen or is it just availability, availability of that nutrient to those plants? Right. Yep, yep, definitely.

Chris

Barron: Any other things before we switch over to soybeans here? Anything that you— the other things you're seeing, symptomology of diseases or insects or anything that you guys are seeing across the, across the board that's kind of a big deal or anything?

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah. So here late in the season, probably one of the things moving in from a disease standpoint that's new to our area here in Eastern Iowa is tar spot.

Chris

Barron: Okay.

Eric

Zumbach: And so we've seen that identified now, um, in my geography, at least half of my geography that I work. So I'm giving a kind of Cedar Rapids, Iowa city and that move east of the Mississippi River to give you some sort of a geography, generally speaking, where that's showing up. And we've got confirmed reports of, uh, of a tar spot and obviously Southern Wisconsin and into Illinois. They, they're certainly seeing some tar spot over there. So We're getting more confirmation of it here this year. We're cool and we're humid right now, so that's perfect for that disease to kind of keep its fuel going. And so that's one thing that's showing up. And then the other thing is just overall rootworm pressure of what we're seeing, extended diapause, and some of that first-year corn getting some pretty high beetle counts of Northern Corn Rootworm Beetles.

And some of that first-year corn, that's a concern. And then also too, just long-term corn on corn, just the amount of rootworm rootworm feeding we're seeing on some of those fields. And usually what happens, we get a wind event to push the corn down, start digging, that's when we uncover some of that stuff. So I encourage everybody to, you know, get out and do some digging now and understand truly what's going on underneath the ground from a rootworm standpoint and plan to make those changes if we need to coming into the next growing season.

Chris

Barron: Right, for sure. Any other things you're seeing, or is that pretty much covered the corn on?

Eric

Zumbach: Those are pretty much the, I guess, the highlights as far as the big buckets that we're seeing. As far as, like you said, nitrogen, the Tar Spot's kind of the new disease coming in, and the corn rootworm thing is something we're really gonna have to keep an eye on, particularly as we move up into northeast Iowa where they've been dealing with heavy pressure.

Chris

Barron: What other areas have been dealing with the Tar Spot before it?

Eric

Zumbach: So last year really was when we really had first confirmations here in Iowa. Typically it's been over in Illinois, eastern Corn Belt, now it's moving west.

Chris

Barron: So it's moving from east to west.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, moving east to west. And so southern Wisconsin last year was dealt pretty heavy with it. Northeast Illinois and then, or northwest Illinois, and then across the river into Iowa, right along the river. Jackson County is where we had some real heavy pressure last year.

Chris

Barron: So western Iowa and Minnesota, look out.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, knock on wood, they don't get it. But they've got other issues on the western side of the state with gall midge in soybeans, which is a new pest that we haven't seen yet. So we might hopefully don't have trading wars and give them something, we get something back. Exactly. One of those deals.

Chris

Barron: Exactly. Well, that should kind of COVID things on corn. Let's hit beans for a minute. You know, we, we talked about the 3 planting windows, April, the May, the June on corn. We had kind of the same thing on soybeans. What are some of the things that you're seeing on soybeans with the earlier planted? I mean, we've seen more people wanting to get to that earlier planted and nobody was able to do that in some areas this year. And, and so what are you seeing there?

Eric

Zumbach: So the big thing with the soybeans, like you said, you know, obviously the push is early planted beans. We've got plenty of research out there indicate we need— there's advantages to planting soybeans early. So unfortunately, the way Mother Nature threw them the curveball at us this year, vast majority of beans in my geography are planted, especially in the southern portion of my area, were planted in June. And so, you know, you hear comments right now that, boy, the beans will really look good. Those early planted beans are catching up to the— for early— later planted beans are catching up to the early planted beans.

Chris

Barron: But They look good from the road.

Eric

Zumbach: They look good from the road, but yeah, once you start diving into them and start counting nodes, you're gonna find that they're not there.

Chris

Barron: The bean—

Eric

Zumbach: those bean yields just not gonna be there. So, and Pioneer's done a lot of research over the years, and it runs about a 0.4 bushel per day yield loss as you move later in the season. So, so if you look at an April planted bean to a mid-June planted bean, you can realistically say there's 12 to 15 bushels lost there just due to planting date. So And so I think if you go out and start uncovering these beans that were later planted, even though they look really tremendous and they're similar height and everything, they're just— we're counting about some fields we've been in about 12 nodes in that later planted bean. Or if you go to some of those early planted beans, we're looking around 18 to 19 nodes. So obviously every place there's a node, there's gonna be a set of pods there. So, so it just comes down to sheer numbers game.

We just don't have the nodes, we don't have the pods, and then on those nodes we don't have as many pods per node as what we do on the early planted beans, right? So, so it presents its own set of challenges.

Chris

Barron: And we're seeing the vegetative growth in some, a lot of those cases too. And so, yeah, um, so it's kind of deceiving from the road at 50 miles an hour. You about got to get out and kind of look, know the planting date. And I know somebody was talking to me earlier this week where they saw some plots where they had planted April through June, and the early planted varieties had double the pods than the latest planted one, the earliest planted versus the latest planted.

Eric

Zumbach: And it comes down to sunlight. You just look at some of those later planted beans in June, and we're sitting here almost the 1st of September, and we're just not getting the daylight to keep that factory running as efficient as we can on a soybean plant. So the time is just catching us. So, and just one other kind of rule of thumb, you know, you look for every 3-day planting delay, that's that's about 1 day of a harvest delay. So you figure 30 days of planting delay, that's about a 10-day harvest delay roughly. So it's not as stretched out as you might think. Those beans get a little bit closer. So, you know, we're losing about 20 days roughly then in soybean pod development, right, on those later planted beans, which is certainly gonna show up in the tank later on.

Chris

Barron: Impact yield.

Eric

Zumbach: Yep, it's a direct correlation to certainly yield.

Chris

Barron: So, but what about one thing I was hearing today at the meeting that you and I are both at is that, you know, some of these beans are podding like almost right on the ground, and how are we gonna cut these? Is that something that you're seeing where the pods are a little closer to the ground, or you're not seeing that?

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, we are and aren't. That kind of depends, you know, when we look at later planted beans, you know, one of our recommendations is we want to push plant height up. So we recommend narrow rows, and we recommend increasing those populations all for the point of getting— pushing plant height up and dealing with some of those issues with pods on on the ground. So there's some management things we could do early in the season, but it doesn't necessarily rectify everything. But, um, so there's something early in season that we make those recommendations to, you know, offset some of those challenges late in the fall.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, I think a lot of people had been cutting back populations, which has shown some yield benefits to that, but then as the planting date gets later, you're saying we probably should be not, not leaving those planting rates down that low, we need to be increasing the rates. You start getting into June, we need more plant height, and you got to crowd them a little more to get the height, get the pods up off the ground.

Eric

Zumbach: Yep, exactly. That's what we're trying to do is push plant height, right, get to that sunlight, get pods off the ground. And the other side of it is to get quicker canopy closure for weed— weeds busting through that canopy. So, right, um, so yeah, it's, um, a couple things we can consider that hopefully we don't have to hit next year. We can right, those beans in early, but certainly something we can manage for.

Chris

Barron: What are you seeing for diseases and soybeans, insect pressure and disease issues? Are you seeing much?

Eric

Zumbach: You know, so in the soybeans, there's always, you know, earlier in the season we've seen the Japanese beetle, probably the big buzzword this year around the western part of my area, and a little bit in my area is thistle caterpillar and defoliation. So those migrate up from the south and come into our territory, and so we probably had more acres sprayed at this thistle caterpillar this year than what we've ever seen before, at least in my career, what I've seen. So, and for the thistle caterpillar, that's what the Painted Lady butterfly is, what the outcome is once that turns into a butterfly. Okay, it's a Painted Lady butterfly. So, so if you're traveling down any fields or along the roads here a few weeks ago, you know, you're pretty well covered with the Painted Lady butterflies hitting windshield.

And so that tells you what kind of numbers we out there, those thistle caterpillars. Right. But yeah, so, and then the other side of it, not seeing a lot of Sudden Death Syndrome in my area right now. We're starting to see it show up a little bit. So we had some late rain, so that's pulling that toxin up into that plant and expressing itself in the leaf. But I think we're— knock on wood— at least where I'm at, we're not seeing any whole field large-scale incidences of sudden death that's being affected by that. And partly too, just better agronomics and soybean varieties and complementing seed treatments that are complementing that. —so we're seeing that in both corn as well.

Chris

Barron: So with some of the stand establishment, the seed treatment is probably a big help on, you know, it's definitely— we've seen a trend of less and less sudden death. Not that if the environment was perfect, we'd probably still have to fight it.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, and really all the seed treatment, a lot of the seed treatment technology is also trying to accommodate— we're trying to push those planting windows earlier, so we're trying to accommodate for those early season diseases, even on corn and beans, both. But we're just trying to reassure ourselves that we can get that good stand established earlier in the season to maximize those yields later in the season. So, so yeah, we're— you're going to continue to see a lot of technology upgrades and seed treatments here as we move into the future again. So we got some good improvements this year. And so, um, something that really gives us a good benefit, because not only do we try to plant early, we get more acres planted in a day earlier than what we did years ago. So, right, we can cover more acres. So we need that level of protection, which is complementing those, right?

Chris

Barron: Um, I guess kind of the last thing on soybeans was kind of wondering, um, just to have you tell me a little bit about how's this crop finish if we have a frost on soybeans. So they're half green and half yellow and, and they're reaching maturity, but you know, they're not quite there. What kind of impact do we see there on the soybean side?

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, so that's a great question, and that's gonna certainly depend on where those soybeans are at. If we've had good moisture, getting grain fill up to that point, and we'd happen to get a killing frost. But so it really comes down to what that seed size is when we do have that killing frost. And again, it's hard for me, it's hard to put a number on that because we know that we're gonna have varying seed sizes, later planted beans being, you know, fewer pods, and some other stresses going on through the growing season. But certainly can have a huge impact on yield if we get that frost too early, and we know we're gonna reduce that soybean size in that pod. It can equate to a lot as far as, you know, yield loss goes from that standpoint.

Chris

Barron: So that's a tough one to call because it kind of depends on how far along it is and how it looks. And beans are pretty tough no matter what to kind of figure out.

Eric

Zumbach: Yeah, there's a lot of factors there. I'd hate to just throw a number out because there's so many other factors in there that we're dealing with this year and what I've seen with different stresses in different fields that to come up with a general number, which there is probably one out there, just there's just so many other factors that we're looking at right now. So, but the good thing with soybeans, they're pretty pretty tough bird. And I think, you know, the way the growing season is, some of our early planted beans are starting— early varieties, early planted beans are starting to turn a little bit. So I think we're on the downhill side of some of this. And from a soybean standpoint, other than our— some of our June planted soybeans, no.

Chris

Barron: Right, so late planted. Is there anything else that we haven't hit on? I think we're kind of getting close to wrapping up here. Anything else I haven't hit on that you're seeing, kind of any trends or anything that we need to be aware aware of going into harvest?

Eric

Zumbach: I think probably the big thing is hopefully we can get our harvest out. There's a lot of tillage and a lot of, I call it, agronomic sins we got to get corrected from, not from last year, from last fall being so wet and spring being so many challenges there, that hopefully we can get a good open fall and get some good tillage done. Fertility is always, and drainage is always the two things that seem to crop up on tough years. You know, the good drainage, high fertility soils can always seem to pull off a pretty good crop. Even in a challenging year. So looking at those areas of the field that we don't have questions on, that maybe we could benefit, you know, by putting some additional tile in and managing some of the compaction layers like that, there's going to be huge dividends down the road.

And also too, then tied into that, making sure we understand those insect pressures, particularly corn rootworm. I think that's one for me that we really got to get a handle on as we move forward in our geography here. So, right.

Chris

Barron: Well, I appreciate that. That was really some great information from the agronomy side of things. And if somebody wants to get a hold of you, give you a shout, or email you with a specific question based on any of these stuff we called or talked about, how would, how would they get a hold of you, or what would you recommend there? Yeah, we're pretty easy to reach.

Eric

Zumbach: So, you know, as far as that, my email, it's eric.zomba@pioneer.com. You can get a hold of some of the sales reps or anybody within Pioneer, and we can certainly reach out to, to whoever. So there's— fortunately, they're just more than one of me across the Midwest, and there's a lot of solid field agronomists out there.

Chris

Barron: So, um, so get a hold of their local Pioneer rep. There's a lot of agronomy assistance out there if people need it. Yep.

Eric

Zumbach: So there's a lot of agronomists out there, and obviously we all specialize in our own areas and familiar with the growers that we work with in our particular areas. So yeah, reach out to anybody in the Pioneer world, from a sales rep to a territory manager to field agronomist in their geography. The guys in Iowa, they can certainly reach out on the eastern side to myself and be happy to get them connected or any answers we can get answered for them.

Chris

Barron: Awesome. Well, that's great. Thanks a lot, Eric. Really appreciate your time and your expertise. You got a lot of experience with Pioneer and a lot of agronomy experience and been in the field for a lot of years. So again, thanks a lot.

Eric

Zumbach: Appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate your time. Look forward to a better 2020, right? Yeah, exactly.

Chris

Barron: That's for sure. Sure. So, well everybody, thanks a lot for joining us on this episode of the Ag View Pitch, and we will catch you next time. Thanks.

Narrator: Thanks for joining us on today's episode of the Ag View Pitch. As always, you can reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com or duanel@netins.net. We'll catch you next time on the Eggview Pitch.