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Crop update: Lack of fall rains may affect 2025 growing season

By Bob Streit - Farm News columnist | Oct 11, 2024

The crop harvest of 2024 continues without any weather disruption. While that could be considered a welcome event, it may be cause for concern. September and October are supposed to be the months when fall rains are supposed to arrive and start to build up the deep moisture profile for use by the thirsty 2025 crops during the heat of the summer. Once the cooler late fall air masses begin to move in they do not deliver as much moisture.

This may create a chain of questions about climate, grain supplies in the U.S. and South America, plus a warning given by a noted meteorologist who most of you know and enjoy listening to. There are many cycles in nature and in the universe. These are typically due to the gravitational influence which celestial bodies such as the sun, the moon, the large planets and larger comets have on our weather cycles.

When Elwynn Taylor relocated to Iowa after his military days, he wanted to study some of the major cycles. He was interested in Farmer Benner, a Kentucky farmer who charted grain surpluses versus grain scarcities and how they track with business cycles.

Grain surpluses led to low prices and a slow down in economic activity in ag-heavy states. Benner noticed this and carved it in beams in his barn. To test this theory, Elwynn grabbed his chain saw and went to where old barns were being torn down and obtained those beams which he dissected to note the growth rings. As clear as day was the Benner cycle, in which he saw a repeat of dry years twice in a 35-year period.

Now, when one starts to chart cycles, many of them intersect and interact. Coming up is the Glessberg cycle, named for Wolfgang Glessberg, a German climatologist. It appears every 91 years, as in 1847, 1936 and now again in 2025. Now this past September went down as the driest September on record. Has this drought already started? If it has and if it lasts through the high percentage 2025 cropping season, what management and marketing decisions will need to be made to best protect our crops? If the cycle does repeat itself in other grain-producing countries like Brazil and Argentina, what will happen to our grain supplies and prices worldwide?

Both of those countries have been experiencing hot and dry conditions more severe than they have seen before. A number of wise observers ask if the deforesting of the forest is causing the changes.

If the 2025 Midwest growing season becomes as dry as the 91-year suggests, coupled with our current rainless fall, any carryover grain may fetch much higher prices than they could now. It could create a 12-month-long weather market. Livestock operators may want to lock in as much grain as they project needing over the 24-month time period. Grain farmers will want to sit down with their ag consultant and construct a cropping plan that minimizes water use and maximizes plant moisture use per inches of moisture water gained via rain or allowing stubble to catch drifting. The tips that observant and seasoned agronomists would suggest would include, getting rid of hardpans with tillage, finding out about root architecture of their planned hybrids, the value of in-furrow applied minerals and biology, the effect of traits on mineral levels in plants, the importance of zinc on drought tolerance in plants, the effects of in-furrow or foliar-applied fish meant to stimulate fungal growth and water use efficiency in plants, products for seed or in-furrow application that increase heat and stress tolerance, and lastly the use of biologicals and minerals to improve water use efficiency in the crops. If this thought process is new to any of my readers, it would be beneficial to have a sit-down meeting with a person who could give guidance on how to prepare for 2025 and have both a defensive and aggressive mentality.

Health problems in ag

How many of you heard of a report stating that Iowa is now the No. 2 state in percentage of inhabitants being diagnosed with some form of cancer. I heard of it secondhand so had to do a bit of sleuthing to find the source of that study or report. It was the Iowa Cancer Register housed at the University of Iowa. They have been tracking this for decades and started so see a sizeable increase in the 2012 to 2014 time frame.

Those who keep the statistics recognize that their main challenge now is to determine what caused this increase. It creates a hot potato for the offending parties. Of course, those parties are claiming that binge drinking has gotten much worse in the last decade and that even school-age kids have become binge drinkers.

They are hoping to identify which product(s) is the largest offender. They made note of the fact that 237,000,000 pounds of herbicides are applied to crops within the state. What is disgusting about the entire situation is that proposing a solution is not on their minds. Instead they are trying to pass a bill in several Midwest states to protect them from health-related lawsuits. That effort needs to fail and the underhanded bribes to the sponsors of the bill needs to be publicized.

The Iowa City crowd likes to publicize the large hospital they built to concentrate on treating kids with cancer. Twenty years ago, such a facility for such a purpose would have seemed unreal. But sadly, it has become a reality. For someone who has lost an 8-month-old grandson to cancer two years ago, I am not going to keep quiet about this issue. What it has done is to search for softer and safer products that can be used by farmers on a widespread basis.

There are now a few existing medical/ag groups which have trials underway to measure the scope of this problem. Usually I don’t think that the land grant university in this state would support such research, but several major universities are already involved.

The challenge of soggy sauerkraut

That sounds like a song which would have been written and sung by Tom T. Hall. Actually, it is a report based on a study in a Midwestern state where the researchers were trying to figure out why the kraut companies were sending several large batches of kraut to the landfill, as it was soggy and brown instead of white and crisp. The conclusion was that the growers were having up to five tons of poultry applied to the fields as their fertility program. Enough samples of poultry litter, liquid and solid hog manure, and dairy manure showed that the glyphosate in the grain diets remains in the manure and accumulates over the years to levels which are affecting the crops.

If that sounds far-fetched, I know of numerous fields which have had high rates of hog honey as the DNR rules are P based. Over the last decade those fields have had 15 gallons per acre of a herbicide which has a long residual. Those are the fields which are strong candidates for receiving an application of the new Yield and Shield or now Paleo Biotica. More 2024 data will be available. In a past trial at this farm they saw a 10 to 16 bushel per acre increase in their corn yields. In one RR cotton field in Alabama the operator saw a 25% yield increase.

Corn and soybean harvests

By now many farmers have finished bean harvest or are hoping to catch a rain and raise the harvest moisture. Overall the beans are yielding better than expected, given the fact that most areas caught very little to no rain during the late grain fill period. I have not seen any comparisons on sprayed vs. not sprayed for the late aphid infestation in northwest and northern Iowa.

Corn harvest continues for many growers, with some who didn’t have to wait for driers. The grain has been slow to dry, which is typical in which corn dies an unnatural death. Yields have been better than expected where supplemental nitrogen was applied or when Envita did its job. Having a deep root system was vital as the plants really had to go deep for moisture once the rains ceased. In line ripping paid dividends again. Kevin or Brock Kimberley’s advice on how to fracture the soil was valuable again as moisture was deep.

Any tactic or product used to promote soil health and increase Haney scores was valuable in that keeping the plants alive and filling helped to maximize grain fill. Fields that died early from a bacterial problem or for any other reason had more ear tip back and kernels which shrunk up, leaving a spongy ear and kernels which lost potential.

Larry Eekhoff and his cohorts in Webster City and Central Iowa Agronomy and Supply and Tidal Grow funded the meeting. Their company makes fertilizer products made from either shrimp shells or solubilized fish. A few of his think-different farmers applied the products at varying timings and saw immediate results in all rating categories. So they continued using them. They took tissue samples and had them analyzed. Once the ears formed they pulled ears and made notes of ear size, kernel rows and length — plus noted any plant differences. At the last inspections when kernel fill was close to finishing, they still saw enough benefit that their yield forecasts for a biological/shrimp and/or fish vs. a conventional program, appear poised to yield from 1.15% to 1.72% better than the conventional program. In some of the trials, the applied rate of commercial nitrogen was a measurable amount. The reason to pay attention here is because the powers that be foresee a smaller and more expensive fertilizer supply. Thus any item that promotes and verifies fertilizer efficiency needs to be considered for use.

We used a new product on soybean as a disease controller. It was called Defender-T and is an amino acid chelated along with Cobalt, Boron and Moly. Its advantages over regular Fl- or Cl-based fungicides include: curative — meaning your timing does not have to be perfect, systemic — meaning one droplet on a leaf will be all through the plant within two to three hours, long lasting as 40 to 50 days, no chance of resistance, and no worker exposure hazards. It works by supplying needed minerals and is less expensive.