USDA-NASS forecasts yields of 225 for corn and 66 for soybeans in Illinois, but are the IL Soy Envoys seeing this potential in their fields? Listen as they share crop conditions, discussing the possible need for a second fungicide pass, and addressing reports of tar spot, SDS, white mold, and more.
The guests in today’s podcast include Craig Grafton, Bayer Crop Science; Karen Corrigan, McGillicuddy Corrigan Agronomics; and Drew Beckman, Beck’s Hybrids. Today’s podcast was hosted by Kelsey Litchfield, Agronomic Outreach Specialist for Illinois Soybean Association.
(upbeat music) - Hello everyone. Welcome back to Illsoid Advisor, another episode towards the end of August. I have Drew Beckman, Karen Corrigan, and Craig Grafton with me here today. I don't know if you guys saw the yield forecast that NASA released earlier this week, specifically for Illinois corn 225 soybeans 66. So I'd say they're expecting somewhat of a record crop and I'm curious to go around now and see what are you seeing in the fields? Do you see a record crop? Karen, we'll start with you. - We have some disease setting in at the moment, so I think that's gonna have some effect on it, particularly in the soybeans. There's a lot of SDS showing up from the wet period that we had between germination and emergence. So far, the corn fields I've been in have been very clean. I know Eastern Iowa is having some issues with Tarspot coming in and this is prime weather for that to flourish. So that's something that we need to really keep an eye on, particularly if people haven't sprayed their corn at our one or so. But I mean, it doesn't feel like a record crop year. Generally, our record crops are when we're on the dryer side and I feel like we've had a much wetter year, so I guess we'll find out in a month or so. I think harvest is gonna come fast, which is another thing that can drop the yields. If the plants mature, it's one thing, but if they just die, then the yields are not gonna be there either, so. - Do you think Karen and anyone can answer this as well? If we're seeing Tarspot come in, is it worth? Is it worth the investment of another pass of fungicide given what's happening in the markets? - Well, I think you have to look at your own situation. How many leaves are affected? What do the temperatures look like? Use the tool like the Tarspotter out of the University of Wisconsin that can help you kind of determine your probability of a higher infestation. We have to remember too that Tarspot generally happens in Southern Wisconsin, Northern Illinois. It's not always this far down. So you really need to take into account where you are in Illinois. I don't think it's an automatic. I think there's a lot of things that you need to think through and definitely you have to look at what your budget is for the year and what you have invested in the crop. So I know it's hard sometimes for people to stop spending money, but sometimes that's the best thing they can do. - Yeah, the one piece I would add is we had such a wide planning window. There may be some cornfields out there that do have a long way to go. And so maybe those would be the ones I would think about first to try to get them through the finish line, especially with some of this cooler weather slowing things down a little bit. That might be another thought, but yeah, it's hard to stop spending money. - Drew, any thoughts on fungicide pass? - I would agree with everything they said. I mean, the fields that I have been in that have had some tarot spot beginning to develop are mostly starting to dent. So the finish line is not that far away. And even at our field day yesterday, speaking with growers about this exact topic, a lot of them were feeling like in '21 where we had a lot of late infestation of tarot spot. Maybe they lost five to eight bushel, which I know sounds like a lot, but when you look at the economics right now, is that going to pay for a fungicide application, a second fungicide application? I'll let you run that math on your own, but I know what my answer is. - Drew, let's stick with you. North, are you seeing any reports of white mold? - So just a very limited amount, yes, I am. Mostly in corners, compacted areas, fields that have had a history of white mold. I was wondering if we would see development, we had a short window that was favorable for disease to develop, and it does seem like it took advantage of that. Personally, I have seen it a little bit more and what the trend has kind of been, I would say it aren't area of the last two years, two to three years, is we do seem to be seeing in the later maturing varieties, because we do need those flowers in the lower portion of the canopy for infestation to occur. And a lot of it seems like the tune, I would say two, five to two, nine, three, oh, ones, varieties are normally kind of done flowering in that segment of the plant, whereas our three, oh, and later varieties are still flowering through that. That's not gonna be the case every time, that just seems like what's been happening or what I've noticed here the last few years. I have not seen any massive infestations of white mold, just like I said, a few plants here or there, fields that have a history of, I remember, square tini or some rot or right mold is a hard fruiting structure. So once you have that in a field, you will have it. You have the inoculum there for a very long time. - Drew, you're just getting fresh off of technology days. You work for VEX hybrids. Any questions that farmers are asking you that you didn't see coming? - A lot of questions are actually around that second fungicide path. That was a big portion of it. Actually my entire speech that we did here in El Paso yesterday was all about, all around that fungicide application window. And I would still say that even with commodity prices where they are growers are still very optimistic. And they're still wanting to optimize yield. They're still willing to make those investments. That was, and I don't wanna say that was surprising, but I thought that there would maybe be a little bit more of a darker sentiment, if you will. And I'm still not seeing that quite yet. So I think that was probably the biggest surprise. A lot of questions around this record yield piece. And I'm gonna be very similar to carrying here. I just am not really seeing a record crop out there. Especially in the corn, we are seeing that maybe we had some stress around that V5 to V7. Our rows are round counts. And this is no matter the brand, I'm not picking on any brands here. It are not that fantastic, right? A lot of six teams, we're not seeing 18s and 20s. Like I think people are maybe planning on. Now that can change a lot as we move through grain fill here. And we're having a very nice grain fill period at cool. It's gonna be elongated, we have moisture. There's a lot of good things happening, but we can only make up for so much. So it's gonna be interesting to see how that moves along. And I can't say that I have an answer for that. A weird thing that I'm seeing in maybe Karen and Craig can kind of back reinforce this or urban. But I'm almost seeing what looks like bird feeding on a lot of like whole fields. And I'm also finding Northern corner rootworm beetles in that you're feeding on the kernels. And I mean, I'm finding, and it's very consistent throughout these fields. And now I found it in more than one now. And I've never seen anything like it before. - Is that mostly North of I-80? What's the location of North Korea area? - Oh, okay. - That I've seen it right now. But I kind of had shrugged it off of the one off, but I actually was walking my own field here yesterday after we got back from El Paso. And I found a little bit of it there as well. But it almost looks like Northern corner rootworm beetles are feeding kind of on that, on that year itself. Just very, very odd and everything, anything like it before. - I can't say I've seen that either. I did see some grasshoppers yesterday. - Yeah, yes, I've seen that too. - Craig, I was gonna say, I was going to ask Craig, but this is for anyone. I know when we talked to a couple of weeks ago, stink bugs were still somewhat of a nuisance. Are we seeing those or have the stink bugs gone away? - I did see some yesterday. I didn't see a ton. So I would say they're still there. I think it was an imp, but yeah, they're still there. I don't know that they're quite as prevalent as they were, but I don't know what you guys are seeing Karen drew, but. - I've seen a few, nothing major. - Yeah. - Craig, what else are you seeing out in the fields? - So I guess yesterday I took a loop, went west over towards Springfield and SDS, like Karen mentioned, is starting to pop up pretty heavily in my planning date trial that I've highlighted before in a blog and such. You can see drastic differences between our first planning date, which was mid April. And I think we had a pretty big delay, honestly, between the first and the second date, but the second date doesn't show any. You have to hunt to see any kind of SDS starting to show. So it just shows that some of that earlier planning stuff is gonna show, be more prone to getting some SDS or other diseases come in. So there was that and then Tarspot. So Tarspot, I was in B-Min, two days ago, and I found it, but I had to hunt pretty hard, which is east to Decatur. And then yesterday I was in Stonington and then over by Pleasant Plains and I could find it as soon as I basically rolled down the window. So it seems like Decatur in West, it's a little bit more advanced than east of there. My dad's been scouting, he hasn't found it yet. So he's in Eger County, so kind of adds up. I also heard it's bad in Southern Illinois, too, down around Evansville. So that's something they haven't had to deal with before. So. - They have gotten a lot of rain down there, that's for sure this year. - So yeah, in this cool weather is it can go fast. I've seen fields not in Illinois, but in Iowa a couple of years ago, it was just black. So it can go fast and that's probably why you guys are asking about a second application because it can turn things very fast. - So continue, just go ahead. - The worst infestation of it I've actually seen so far was in the small corner of Missouri that I actually covered that very northern little tip of it. And that's actually where I've seen the most advanced of it. So that was kind of surprising, like you said, Craig, they're not kind of new to them a little bit. They've had it, but not kind of setting in like this. - And I will say what the SDS showing up in soybeans were also looking for a red crown rot. And some of those symptoms can look like SDS. So really get down there, look for those fruiting bodies and that red color. If you go to illsoidvisor.com and if you think you have red crown rot, we can get you to submit some samples for free 'cause they're really trying to figure out where is red crown rot. They have it in western Illinois, some spots in central Illinois. So get out, look at your fields. I need to take my own advice and go do that 'cause I haven't been out to our fields in a while. So something definitely to keep a look for. We've talked about the wide variety of planting dates today. Any problems you're seeing in the later planted corn or soybeans or is mostly early planted? I think we want to make sure we urge farmers 'cause we had such a wide variety of planting dates this year that they keep a close eye on that and look at those fields, any thoughts? - I was just gonna say, I kind of eat my words when you asked us earlier this year about record yields. And I said, no, 'cause we had such a wide planting window that obviously weather won't align for all of it to be great. But I think we've had a pretty wet, a nice wet July. And I think in the general sense, most everything looks pretty good. I think there's still some holes out there that are gonna hurt. I was in one yesterday where we had some water and you could see nitrogen was gonna be a problem. And I think those are still out there. But I think it was better than I thought it was gonna be as far as the weather goes for all this wide window of things. So that's a good thing. But we'll see how it finishes out 'cause I think it's important to, we still have to get to the finish line here. - I do wanna talk about harvest, but I think I'll save that for next week as we get closer to that September line. Anything else that you guys want to bring up today, any questions that you're getting, anything that should be on our radar? - The only question I've gotten is a second pass and what options are there for fungicides, some of the cheaper ones, what they work, on to our spot and those sorts of things. I would just say, read the label and look at your actives and see what's in there and make sure it would work for you. STS, I don't know that there's a whole lot you can do at this point on that one. Well, most of the soybean diseases at this point. But the other thing would be to look at what you did and what changes you might wanna think about making for next year. You know, that seed ordering time and those plans are probably already starting to pop up as far as conversations go. So, that would be the only thing I could think of right now. - Erin. - I would say it's a great time to evaluate your weed control, especially if you had any fields that got out of hand. Obviously, if you're looking at putting in cover crops, those are things that you need to have in place and get ready to do. 'Cause that will come quick. I did wanna mention that we have had some brown stem rot too, which can be also in the mix with SDS and red crown rot. So definitely split your soybean stems to make sure that the pith is not brown when determining what disease you might have. - I did do that. It was a nice white pith and I did not see any red fruiting body. So I was assuming it was SDS. - Yeah, and there is a lot out there. I just had one grower near Bloomington who did have brown stem rot. - But great reminders 'cause I think there's four or five things that can look like SDS, that symptomology. So it may not be what you think. - Yeah, sorry, I had my junior agronomist with me, but I would agree that, as everything that Karen said, the other side of it I would mention is we set a large amount of samples in U of I, especially from my eoria to Iowa, part of my territory, the southern part. And we, just to verify that we're not being red crowning, hey, no, sorry. But we have not found any red crown rot yet throughout our territory and every sample that we have sent in. So just something that I almost feel like we are a little bit of a witch hunt for that, but just to say that we are mostly still seeing the brown stem rot, the sudden death, things like that. And we really need to be careful to maybe pin the tail and the donkey of it saying, yes, that is red crown rot, or look at, you know, that's what it has to be. No, we're still seeing a lot of these traditional diseases, but we are trying to track like Kelsey said, we're trying to track where it is and maybe where it isn't. - Yep, one in doubt, send in a sample. Karen, do you have anything to add? - Yeah, I just think it's a good idea to see what diseases you have out there, because your best prevention against disease is going to be your seed that you choose, your varieties and your hybrids. So Craig was talking about ordering seeds soon. That's something that you need to make sure you take into account because that's your first best defense. - Yep, definitely. - And a lot of these things that we're talking about are actually controlled by seed treatments too. That's the other thing to remember. So I'm not gonna put a plug in for any particular brands of it, but just keep that in mind. - Yeah, I think we alluded to this earlier this year that write things down. I know that seems so simple and like, it's kind of like a dumb moment, but I'm reminded of how we're all sometimes, we have a short memory. So I think it's good to keep those notes. We'll be ordering seed soon. I didn't want to pass over a cover crop plan too, but maybe that's something we can cover next week since we're winding down here. That's on the horizon. So you just keep going to the next thing and make sure you stop and see, okay, what's happening now? And now how can I prepare for the next season? That's just as important. 'Cause there's some things, like you said, I can't do anymore, but you can definitely plan for 2025. So, all right. Well, I think we'll end this here. Thank you all so much for joining us on ill soy advisor today. We'll be back next week. And we'll see what happens with these disease reports. And we'll talk about some harvest prep I think next week. So thank you all for joining us. (upbeat music) The ill soy advisor podcast is a production of the Illinois Soybean Association Checkoff Program. For more agronomic news and information, visit illsoidvisor.com. That's illsoidvisor.com. (upbeat music) (gentle music)
