Blue Skies?

After two weeks of some amount of rain every day it's great to see the sun.  But, those clouds are starting to gather and heavy rains and storms are predicted for tonight once again. 

We're not sure whether we are coming or going with seed.  We still have corn and soybeans to plant but with the wet weather and the late date we are trying to decide if we still plant corn, if we switch fields yet to be planted over to soybeans, or if we throw in the towel and go preventive planting?  It's a stressful time across the wet areas of the Midwest.  We have stayed busy returning late season corn to the seed plants and bringing in shorter season corn hybrids and soybeans to meet our seed customers needs. 

Visitors

Fall is an amazingly crazy time for us.  During the fall we are combining, hauling corn or soybeans to the barge terminals or ethanol plant, doing tillage, doing weigh checks for our Pioneer customers, and trying to get the boys to all of their activities.  On a late October morning, we had the opportunity to host some special visitors to our farm.  It was an opportunity for us to slow down for a few hours and see our operation through our customers eyes.

I just read another article about buying food locally and started contemplating this visit.   I'm all for buying locally whether it is food or other products.  But, what if your source of food is thousands of miles away?  Is buying local as important as is knowing where your food comes from? 

We hosted a group of Japanese corn customers through the US Grain Council.  There were 22 individuals from very different backgrounds but all had some connection to US corn.  There were economists, starch millers, feed mill managers, grain buyers, a college professor, and even an environmentalist.  Japan happens to be the largest importer of US corn in the world.



Our visitors arriving at our home farm. 

  We began in our meeting facilities and gave them background information about our farm and family.  Our boys were a big hit, especially #1 son with his blue eyes and blond hair. 



Joe explaining how we determine what hybrids to plant.  Notice
some of the men are wearing head phones.  The interpreter speaks
into a microphone which then transmits her voice to the listeners.  I thought
it was pretty cool.  I had never seen this type of setup before.

Their questions ranged from why do we plant both conventional and genetically engineered corn to why did we still have crops standing in the field on October 26th when it is so cold to how do we get our "big" machinary to the field to harvest the corn.

The visitors really got excited when we brought out ears of corn to show them that there is no physical difference between conventional and genetically modified corn.  Many of them had never seen an ear of corn even though they used it in some aspect of their business or occupation. 

 

 

We next headed down the road to our bin site.  They were able to watch how we load out semis to haul our corn to market.  They were very interested in how we handle our grain and store it.  In the past we have sold corn through one of our local grain purchasers to a Japanese business that used the corn to produce beer.  At that time, the end user was very concerned about stress crack in the corn kernels so we had to cool the corn very slowly after drying. 

 

 

The final leg of our tour was to go out into the field and watch the combining process.  I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter where a guy is from every boy/man loves equipment that has wheels. 



 

 

I'm pretty sure that there were hundreds of pictures taken in a matter of minutes when the
Japanese customers got off the bus by the field.











And, just as many were taken when Dad pulled up to the group and opened up the side panels of the combine.

There was one question that at the time surprised me but made perfect sense.  One person wanted to know what the things were coming out of the back of the combine.  Those would be the corn cobs.  Then the next question was if there was a use for the cobs.     

 

 

 

To him this looked like a waste but when we explained to him that the fodder (corn cobs and leaves) helps hold the soil in place during the winter and also adds nutrients back into the soil as the fodder degrades he agreed that this is a very environmentally friendly use. 

 



A cross section of an ear of corn - the kernels
still attached to the cob.

Back to my original question - Is buying local as important as knowing where your food come from?  After spending time with these customers I believe that while it is good to buy local because of the economic values to an area, it is important to know where you food comes from and to make buying decisions based on what you may know about the producer of the product.   I truly feel the Japanese corn customers that came to our farm now have a better understanding of the product they are buying. 

 

Considering the fact that Japan does not have the land available to produce crops like corn, US corn could be labelled local product in this case.  There are only a few other countries that can produce a high quality corn crop and also be a dependable supplier.

 

Any thoughts on the buying local topic?

 

Gary explaining what a corn cob is.

 

 

 

 This young man did all he could to be left behind so he could run the combine with Gary the rest of the day.

 



The Group!

I would like to thank Shannon and John from Iowa Corn and Tetsuo "Tommy" Hamamoto from the US Grains Council for giving us the opportunity to share our story with a great group of Japanese corn customers.  It was an educational experience for all of us!



 

 

Yield Checks

This past week we did our last yield check for the fall harvest season.  Yield checks are a great way for farmers to evaluate their crops and determine if the management practices used during the growing season were successful. 

This is my weigh wagon.

The wagon has an electronic scale to measure the pounds of corn or soybeans unloaded into it.  Once the crop is weighed I auger it into the farmer's wagon or semi.

Another tool I use to do a yield check is a portable moisture tester.  This measures the moisture and test weight of the crop.  The moisture percentage of the grain being harvested determines how it will be handled and dried.  Typically corn is harvested between 18% and 30% moisture.  Some years the corn is wetter and some years the corn is drier.  Towards the end of this fall harvest there was some corn coming out of the field at 16%.  This is great for the farmer as few dollars will be spent on energy to dry the crop.  Our corn goes into our bins at 16%. 

Here is a self portrait or yours truly pushing my measuring wheel.
 

In order to figure out the yield of a crop on a bushel/acre basis I need to know the area that the farm has harvested.  So, I usually walk behind the combine and measure how far the farmer runs the combine.  The width is based on the row width a farmer plants the crop in and how many rows the combine harvests.  In our area, most corn is planted in 30 inch rows.  However, we have neighbors who plant 20", 36", or 38" rows.   Most of the combines in this area harvest 6,8, or 12 rows at a time. 

As farm equipment gets largers our costomers comment that
the hardest part of a yield check is getting the combine auger lined up
to dump corn into the little weighwagon.

Once I have the weight, moisture and area I enter the information into a couple of mathematical equations and come up with the yield in bushesls per acre.  It was a fun fall to run the weigh wagon because the yields in our area were excellent.  The corn yield checks ran from 190 bushels/acre to 275 bushels/acre.  The soybeans were great as well ranging from 62 bushels/acre to 84 bushels/acre. 

I consider the farmer to the original over achiever.  The yield checks we do help farmers determine if management practices worked for them or if they may want to change something next year.  Farmers often put in test plots or experiments in their fields to determine for themselves if something needs to be changed.  Maybe I should say farmers are the original scientist.  We do yields checks or test plots to determine the effects of planting date, planting seed populations, fertilizer applications and rates, various seed treatments such as fungicides, tillage practices even planting depth of the seeds.  The sky is the limit as far as to what a farmer may experiment with!

Once I have the yield data I input this into our Pioneer computer along with the GPS coordinates and field history for the yield check plot locations.  If you go to www.pioneer.com you can enter a ZIP Code into the yield map locations and bring up yield checks and plot results for most of the US.  It's a great web site to learn about crops in the US if you are interested.  Have Fun!