180 bushels per acre. It looks like Ontario’s 2017 corn crop is going to come in above that number and set a new record for the province.
In this episode of RealAgriculture Corn School, Peter Johnson and Bernard Tobin dive into the numbers and try to figure out where all that grain came from in 2017. Johnson says his sources indicate the crop is hovering around 186 bu/ac mark with about 80 to 90 percent of the crop accounted for. He expects that number will fall because poorer yields are typically reported at the end of the season, but eclipsing the 180 bu/ac mark looks like a sure bet.
Johnson notes that growers, on average, are also reporting yields almost 10 percent above their farm average. How did it all happen in a season that featured a tough spring with late planting, a cool summer and a grain fill period that was pushed into the shorter days of September and October?
According to Johnson, the secret may lie in a combination of factors, including cooler weather and less stress at pollination, which produced higher cob kernel counts, as well as near perfect September weather that helped plants optimize grain fill.
Click here for more Corn School episodes.
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