Catching Up & Looking Forward
Hope your summer has been going well! It’s been a while since I checked in, far too long in fact. The last time I checked in here was when we had just breathed a HUGE sigh of relief that harvest 2021 was over. 2022 has moved by with lightning speed and it’s hard to think that another harvest season is just around the corner. It’s been a busy year, so let me catch you up on what we’ve been up to!
We had a fairly quiet winter. We had the normal Illinois frigid cold spell, but maybe a little less snow than we’ve had other years and for the most part it was a “normal” year as far as winters go. We spent our time hauling grain, working in the shop, and getting caught up on some other winter projects. In February, I had the opportunity to attend the Commodity Classic in New Orleans with a group from John Deere and our local Nutrien team. It was a neat experience and I got to learn more about what John Deere and many other companies are planning for the future. Two of John Deere’s projects that were featured heavily you may have heard of; autonomous tractors and See & Spray.
The autonomous tractor is exactly what you think it is…a tractor that drives itself. It may seem strange, but agriculture really lends itself to autonomy. A tractor by itself in a field has much fewer obstacles than a car on even the emptiest highway. We have been using auto-steer technology for many years now and the next logical step is to remove the driver all together. John Deere formally announced the autonomous tractor in January and it will be very exciting to see this technology progress as time goes on. If you want to learn more about it, here is a link to a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvFoRk4JsPc.
The other technology, See & Spray, is one we have been aware of for several years now. It is technology fitted to sprayers that allows them to detect and only spray the weeds, instead of broadcasting spray over the entire field. See & Spray uses cameras and facial recognition technology to differentiate weeds from growing crops in the field. This takes a lot of data collection up front and Blue River Technology, the company who is working on the See & Spray technology, approached us several years ago asking if we would be willing to let them use our fields for the collection process. We were excited about it then and are even more excited to see this project come to fruition. Obviously, one of the biggest benefits of this technology is reduced input costs, because you are only applying chemicals to the specific spots they are needed. Of course, that goes hand in hand with environmental concerns, because you will not need the volume of chemicals you need today. Here is another YouTube link to a video explaining how it all works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Sfnmfw8o0.
It doesn’t take long to go from February to April, and it seemed like I was just catching my breath after the trip to New Orleans when seed started showing up and it was time to hit the fields. We started planting on April 25th, which was a little later than we’ve been starting the past several years. And for good reason, it was cold! We were still getting temperatures in the 20s at that time. But that changed very quickly and just a couple weeks later, we had heat advisories issued for our area with heat indexes in the 100s. Thankfully, that didn’t last long and we went back to seasonable temperatures just a few days later. You never know what Illinois weather will bring, and we had a little bit of everything this spring.
Keeping with what seems to be the theme for 2022, new technology, we were very excited to get the chance to try out Bayer’s new Short Stature corn, or you may have heard it called the Smart Corn System. Once again, it is exactly what it sounds like, corn but…shorter. With traditional corn hybrids reaching a height of anywhere from 9-12 feet tall (or more!), Short Stature corn aims to be less than 7 feet. It still has the same amount of leaves, but the leaves are closer together than in traditional corn allowing the plant to be shorter. So why is this exciting? Since thinking about last fall still makes us wince, one of the biggest benefits is the fact it can stand up better to windstorms. It has a thicker, stronger stalk which makes it less likely to tip over or break in high winds. Not only that, but it also makes late season tasks like spraying fungicide or applying late season nitrogen much easier. Since we purchased a high clearance Hagie sprayer this spring and have gotten back into applying our own fungicide, we are getting re-initiated into spraying tall corn and it’s not very much fun. It was a very welcome sight to see that short corn plot from the sprayer cab! Very thankfully, we haven’t had a windstorm to put it to the true test yet, and I think we can all agree that is a test we don’t want to put it through. But with our ever-changing climate strong storms like the one we had last year or the derecho in 2020 are only going to be happening with more frequency. We are happy to see tools like the Smart Corn System come to market to help us mitigate the weather-related risks that come with farming. If you want to learn more about the Short Stature corn, here is a link to an article from Bayer: https://www.bayer.com/en/innovation/short-corn-is-smart-corn?gclid=Cj0KCQjw0JiXBhCFARIsAOSAKqC8G-kj9Psmp5m0YfNE-TF89eKUe440iabFac3sPN8OUqIKboWNcHIaArDfEALw_wcB
This summer, like all summers, has been busy. Spraying, applying nitrogen, hauling grain, and all the other warm weather projects. Weather-wise, we have been very lucky. We’ve been getting nicely timed rains, and everything looks good. Fingers (and toes!) crossed that we don’t get another August storm to mess it all up. We also haven’t had the smoke cover from wildfires like we have had the past couple of years, so we’re hoping Tar Spot won’t be as damaging as it was last year. We aren’t taking any chances though and are making two trips with fungicide this year. August is going to be just as busy as the rest of the year, we’ve got to finish that second trip of fungicide, finish hauling the last of the 2021 crop, and start getting the combines ready. It’s going to be harvest time before we know it!
So, that should catch you up on everything that’s been going on in our world since the start of the year. There’s been a lot of things pop up and I’m excited to see if fall will drop any new opportunities in our path. I hope you enjoy the last of your summer and I should have another update in a month or so. If you just can’t get enough of us, please check out our social media where I am much better at posting regular updates!