Be prepared for an interesting 2020 harvest (Part 1)

by | Sep 10, 2020 | 5 Ag Stories, News

Oh, 2020. It started with so many high hopes. The horizon looked just a bit brighter for the agriculture industry. Farmers I saw at meetings and trade shows had a little extra spring in their step. Then the year showed us what it was made of. For Iowa farmers, many of them could have fertilized 5000 acres with what 2020 was made of.

No matter what our fields in the state look like, many of us are going to have to try at harvesting them. Mind you, not all the fields in the state are in terrible condition. There are some that have miraculously made it through. Nevertheless, it is time to start scouting those fields and making plans for the 2020 harvest.

John Swalwell is a Technical Agronomist for Dekalb Asgrow in Southwest Iowa. He says that fall field scouting is going to be essential to being successful this year in the combine.

While we had a lot of focus on the last month or two when it comes to the challenges the Iowa crop faced, Swalwell said there were already challenges the moment we put that seed into the ground. The weather seemed better than ideal, but the soil conditions could have been better. It challenged the establishment of a strong root system. That set the stage for the challenges that followed.

Swalwell says those compromised root stands did not need to face a 100-mph derecho wind to have been challenged. However, it did illuminate that some corn stood up better than others. That may have been because of the planting conditions way back in April.

However, simple scouting is not going to give us a simple roadmap to follow this fall. Next week, we will conclude our discussion with John Swalwell in where he will discuss the challenges that farmers are going to see in variability in crops, even in the same fields. He will discuss what farmers need to think about when they make their plans. Scouting and planning will make a difference in bushels harvested, and after a year like 2020, we are going to need to pull in every bushel that we can.