Production Blog

Year for Record Books

Corn yields dominated the news for much of the season, but regulations could be the story for 2015. (DTN photo by Pamela Smith)

DECATUR, Ill. (DTN) -- During the fall harvest, I heard more than one farmer say they'd never experienced anything like 2014 in terms of yield.

In big-yielding years such as this, I always feel for those guys that encountered disasters. I talked to one farmer in Nebraska that had four hail events and a tornado. In Texas, we featured a cotton grower that hopes to regain moisture this year by moving to a summer fallow system. Much of Minnesota got too much rainfall, got planted late and had enough wet holes replanted to soybeans for many cornfields to qualify as succotash.

Still, the bulk of the Midwest pushed out corn like never before. Soybeans also showed us again that they could put on yields late in the season. We finished out the year learning Georgia farmer Randy Dowdy exceeded the 500-bushel yield mark in the 2014 National Corn Grower Association yield contest.

There's been a lot of credit given for the yield gains realized in 2014 to genetics, traits and low pest pressure. Let's not fool ourselves. While all of those things may have helped protect yield, adequate moisture and cool temperatures made the crop this year.

The challenge for 2015 will be to continue safeguarding the crop in the face of lower commodity prices. Weeds, insects and disease don't chart commodity prices.

WEED WORRIES

The temptation will be to trim input costs, and I'm concerned that residual herbicide programs might be close to the top of the list. Purdue University weed scientist Bill Johnson noted a few weeks ago in a presentation that growers that either didn't get good activation or perhaps those that experienced crop injury might be tempted to skimp or eliminate residuals this coming spring. That's a bad bet, especially given the waterhemp and Palmer amaranth populations that are now spreading across much of the Midwest.

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This year growers realized hope that additional weed/trait systems might be available in the near future. Notice I did not say "new." The dicamba, HPPD and 2,4-D trait technologies coming down the road are twists on old technologies. Each will offer distinct advantages and disadvantages, not to mention some new realities with regard to application procedures, nozzle usage and setback provisions.

EPA EDICTS

When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registered Enlist Duo, Dow AgroScience's herbicide designed for use with 2,4-D trait technology, it did so with a shortened registration and a label full of rules. The agency also warned it will do the same for any new trait technology coming forward.

The attitude that we "need" another herbicide fix is dangerous. None of the upcoming trait technologies will be standalone products, and that's an economic and mental step-change for growers that became accustomed to one or two shots of glyphosate.

TRAIT TALK

I spent much of 2014 tracking trait acceptance. China gave U.S. corn growers a December Christmas present by finally issuing a safety certificate to Viptera, Syngenta's above-ground Bt product. Two soybean traits were also included in the approvals, including LibertyLink 55, a glufosinate-based trait submitted for review seven years ago by Bayer CropScience. DuPont Pioneer's Plenish stack was also given a thumbs-up.

Syngenta's 2014 commercial launch of their rootworm product Duracade without China import approvals forced growers into stewardship programs to funnel the grain to acceptable channels.

The big question heading into 2015 is whether China will be more accepting as many important traits await their nod -- including all the upcoming herbicide trait technologies.

MORE BUZZ

Honeybees might be tiny, but they showed how powerful they can be this year as neonicotinoid seed treatments came under fire. The compounds are under review for re-registration, but the EPA released a single economic study calling into question the benefit of these treatments in soybeans. Stay tuned for corn and cotton assessments.

THE SUMMARY

There's not much you can do to control the weather, but agronomy practices in general are under much more scrutiny. Overuse and mismanagement of products such as glyphosate and Bt products have left a legacy. In the coming years, the need to manage inputs rather just use them will be increasingly important.

(AG)

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