Corn harvest could be ‘special’
Staff writer
Corn harvest is more than a month away, but extension agent Rickey Roberts is willing to go out on a limb: “This year, the corn has a chance to be special.”
Conditions have been good for corn, with rain throughout the summer, according to Nathan Barney, who works at Agri Trails Co-op in Tampa and Durham.
“Some places have been getting more rain than others,” he said Tuesday, “but every time it acted like it was going to be hot and dry, we’d kind of catch a break and it would cool down and rain,”
Roberts said the number of farmers growing corn has increased over the past decade.
“It’s an economic shift,” he said. “In my opinion, what we have done is taken acres away from wheat and put it into corn.”
Growing corn is risky. It’s more expensive to maintain and more vulnerable to pests than wheat. At the moment, it’s also selling for less than wheat, Barney said.
But the payoff is pronounced. Corn can yield more than double the number of bushels per acre that wheat does — 100 to 150 in a good year.
“The potential for corn can be tremendous,” Roberts said. “When it’s good, it’s what I call a home run crop.”
Farmers will pray for dry conditions for the next few weeks before harvest begins in September. Employees at the grain elevators are moving wheat around to make room for the crop.
Hail, wind, and heavy rain this time of year can damage the corn’s quality and make harvest difficult. Storms similarly delayed wheat harvest earlier this summer.
“The crop’s not in the bin yet,” Roberts said. “There’s still room for something to go wrong.”
But Roberts and Barney agreed that, at the moment, things are looking good.
“Every farmer needs bushels to sell,” Roberts said. “This year, we’re going to have bushels.”