by Paw Paw, me. (Ap) – Robb Rynd and his brother grew up on agriculture and wanted to do more of them outside of their day jobs, so they went together on what is now a little more than 200 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat and care. Last year it was a good year, and Rynd said he enjoyed running the fields with his children to see how the corn was going.
This year is a different story.
Throughout the summer he searched for brown and wild leaves or corn ears, with grains missing, and now it becomes clear that every core counts this harvest. “It is almost depressing to go out and look at it and say:” Oh yes, it looks bad, “he said.
In the most important corn construction countries, climate change increase the conditions that make the observation of corn growth for farmers. Factors such as consistently high summer temperatures overnight, droughts and more rainfalls that are more regulated at the wrong time, the pollination of the plants can disturb and every full ear corn and rather a gambling.
Overall, corn farmers were lucky this year with the weather in the late season, which was contributed to a record-punch rod rod harvest. Experts, however, say that seizures of extreme weather intensify the waiting game during a critical season between plants and harvest.
The climate change caused by humans has deteriorated several extreme heat events in the United States this year and has increased the likelihood of hotter over night temperatures since 1970. According to Climate Central, an independent group of scientists, the climate science and data to the public.
“They also mean nights as if the corn never gets a break. It’s just hot all the time,” said Rynd. “I know it takes care of me.”
How excessive warmth and precipitation can influence the pollination of the corn
As a corn system, the leaves grows to unveiled the tassel, the part that gives pollen, Mark Licht, an extraordinary professor of agronomy and specialist for expansion cultivation at Iowa State University. If the plant grows too quickly what can happen if it is very hot, the tassel can be wrapped from the leaf too firmly, which means that fewer pollen are released.
This can lead to stained corn ears. According to some agricultural publication reports during the vegetation period, a close torque wrap was reported in parts of the middle west and levels in parts of the middle west and the layers. Licht said that in his 20 years as an agronomist he saw problems with tassel pack.
High temperatures can strain corn in other ways, reduce pollen production, reduce the livelihood of the pollen, or dry other parts of the plants and reduce fertility. “I think one of the problems with pollination that we may have are more because the nights were extremely warm,” said Larry Walton, who ends up near Rynd in the southwest of Michigan, where many farmers are a drier area.
“We tend to be more problematic if we have high temperatures and drought or lack of precipitation,” said Licht. But Iowa had a lot of rain and still saw some pollination problems. Excessive moisture can cause a corn racket, a kind of fungus that grows on the ears.
He said that the farmers would have to pay more attention because “there is only more variable weather”.
Overall “Monster” return that are expected despite difficult weather conditions
This winter, the US village monitor reported in almost 60% of the corn production areas in the middle west. But almost or through the normal precipitation almost everywhere east of the Rocky Mountains this summer, this brought this to only 3%in early August, said Brad Ricky, a meteorologist of the US Department of Agriculture.
In combination with consistent heat, this means that “we expect a monster US corn harvest in 2025,” said Ricky.
But it wasn’t easy for everyone. “This was probably one of the most difficult growing seasons that I experienced in my career,” said Philip Good, a farmer in Macon, Mississippi and chairman of the United soybean board. He planted his corn and soybeans for 60 days behind the schedule because it rained for almost two months.
They have lost a little fertilizer and some plants died in standing water, said Good, but they made it out with a little lucky weather later in the season.
“The rain falls in heavier outbreaks,” said Ricky. He said that this can be a problem for farmers, because even if it does not cause fall floods, the moisture does not necessarily notify the ground. It runs away and carries fertilizer, which represents a problem for the health of Rivers and the pocket books of the farmers.
The trend towards higher humidity and warmer ocean temperatures that contribute to hotter nights could be a bigger problem for the future and the harvest such as corn and soybeans is adding.
Climate variaability increases farmers for a critical time for a critical time
Late summer is a make-or-break time for farmers: they try to assess how much they earn from the harvest of the year and plan their next steps, and the stained pollination does not help.
“We want to update a tractor … or we might try to absorb a little more soil,” said Rynd. “It is difficult to do these things when you have a bad year like this.”
If the uncertain pollination is in the worst case, if 15% to 25% of each corn tube does not have grains, this could mean a significant loss of yield over a large field, said Nicolle Ritchie, an extension agent of the Michigan State University, which helps Walton and Rynd to check their harvest.
Jason Cope was a co-founder of a farm-tech company called Powerpollen, whose equipment can mechanically collect pollen and then dust future plants. He said that due to extreme weather events, the number of “rescue confirmations” that they made for customers – to save fields that of course not dust very well – almost doubled since its beginning in 2018.
Walton said he could make it as long as the pollination problems are not bad.
“You learn to roll from the stress of it because you can’t control most of it anyway,” he added. ___
Follow Melina Walling on X @melinawalling and bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social. Follow Joshua A. Bickel on Instagram, Bluesky and X @joshuabickel. ___
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