Developing a Harvest Strategy for the 2021 Corn Silage Harvest

Sep 16, 2021

By KEVIN D JAREK, Jamie Patton

Wisconsin leads the nation in corn silage production, harvesting over 20 million tons of silage (at 65% moisture) on approximately 970,000 acres in 2020. Corn silage is unique compared to multi-cut forage systems, such as alfalfa, as there is a single opportunity to properly harvest and store quality forage each year. With such high stakes riding on harvest management decisions, farmers and consultants must diligently monitor crop maturity and moisture to optimize harvest timing to balance silage yield, ensiling conditions, and forage quality.

The 2021 growing season has been highly variable across the state. While planting conditions were optimal for most areas of the state, many fields suffered a setback with a late season frost, resulting in variable plant dieback and uneven stands. Additionally, western and southern portions of the state have endured season-long drought with much of the remainder of the state receiving timely, yet inconsistent and often torrential, rainfall. These weather challenges have resulted in significant variability in crop growth, maturity and dry down, both from field to field and within individual fields.

With such crop variability, it is imperative farmers and consultants regularly monitor corn silage acres to properly time harvest activities. Harvesting silage at the proper moisture content for the intended storage structure allows for the proper packing and ensiling, reduces forage spoilage, and minimizes the production of leachates. Whole field moisture content, as well as areas of differential dry down within a field, should be documented in order to develop a harvest strategy to ensure the average moisture content of the packed forage is consistent and within an acceptable range.

Crop moisture levels can be determined by bringing whole plant samples to silage dry down events commonly hosted by regional Forage Councils and agriculture cooperatives. In addition, chopped samples can be submitted to local testing laboratories. Moisture test results from many area silage dry down events co-hosted by UW-Madison Division of Extension are available at https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/silagedrydown/.

Source : wisc.edu

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators