Crop Tour in Nebraska is a balancing act.
In 2022, dryland corn in northeastern Nebraska suffered a serious hit to yield. There were several “zero” yields recorded. Irrigated corn last year in northeast Nebraska was either really good, or hail or early seedling issues or something held back the watered-crop’s yield. The area east of Grand Island and south of the Platte River had issues in 2022, but the good in southeastern Nebraska made up for some of the bad further north.
Flip that script in 2023. The good in northeastern Nebraska is offsetting the bad south of the Platte River. And we saw bad corn... really low-yielding dryland corn, but not “as bad” as what we saw further north last year. And we saw great irrigated corn in southern Nebraska... and some mediocre irrigated corn in south-central Nebraska where pivots and pipe couldn’t keep up with the water demands of the crop.
There were few mentions of disease in corn but it does sound like growers in the far southeastern part of the state will be managing for Tar Spot in their corn crops going forward. On the insect side, we saw more mentions of Eastern Bean Cutworms in corn this year than in the past several years.
We found an average of 91.08 ears in two 30-foot plots this year. That’s up 3.6% from last year and 2% better than the three-year average.
Grain length this year average 6.8 inches, up 2.7% from year-ago but 3.3% shorter than the three-year average.
Kernel rows around the ear averaged 16.08 this year, up about 0.1% from last year and 2.2% fewer that the three-year average.
The average row with in Nebraska corn this year was 30.23, narrowed up by 0.3% from year-ago and 0.26% narrower than the three-year average.
Irrigated corn this year accounted for 49.4% of the samples collected.
Scouts on the Western Leg of the Tour pulled 385 corn samples this year, up from 321 last year and 323 for the three-year average. Why so many more ... especially with the heat? Working smarter not harder. We have more drivers on Tour this year that allow us to “split routes.” If one car running a route can get 20 samples in a day, 2 cars running half that route can get a combined 25 to 30 samples in a day. It makes a big difference.
Soybean pods in a 3’X3’ square this year average 1,160, up 9.1% from year-ago but down 3% from the three-year average.
I’ve not seen a been crop “on the edge” like this year’s bean crop. Not only in Nebraska, but anywhere. Maybe dryland beans looked this way in 2012, but I think we knew the western Belt bean crop was “smoked” by Crop Tour. I also remember the 1988 bean crop during Tour... and I remember former Tour director Jim Quinton saying we had to give the bean crop “time to catch a rain.”
The stress the dryland crop is showing with the forecast for excessive heat, no rain and a breeze, the dryland crop in Nebraska could look a lot different by the end of the week than it does right now. (And not in a good way.)
More of the bean crop is irrigated than ever before. This year on Tour, 48.7% of the bean samples were pulled from an irrigated field.
Tomorrow we head up the western one-third of Iowa. Some of the routes will sneak into central Iowa but we’ll be reporting results from Iowa Crop Districts 7 (SW), 4 (WC) and 1 (NW).