Search the Community

There was quite a bit of down corn in my area this year. I would attribute it to poor stalk quality from Southern Rust and some late season wind that we had. Almost all of the guys here that had it, just left it. I have seen a lot of down corn and everyone always just struggled until they eventually got it done, but not this year. Big guys and smaller guys alike. We only had a small amount that went down, but got through it just fine. If it had been down worse, we still would have picked it. I loaned one of our 8 row heads that has a corn reel on it to our neighbor, but I am confident he left 100 bu/ac on the ground because he didn’t try very hard to get it. Is this a “thing” in other areas, just leave the down corn? Years ago people would turn hogs in on it if it was really bad, but there’s no fence here anymore and no hogs either. There was usually a lot of dirt in the down corn sample, but I never had trouble getting the elevator to buy it. I know the guy I loaned the head/reel to turned it in to his crop insurance, but I don’t feel like that’s a very good option if you could have gotten it.