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Harvest has farmer bouncing between soybeans, corn

GARFIELD, Minn. — Like many Minnesota farmers this year, Adam Johnson has been bouncing back and forth between harvesting soybeans and harvesting corn.

“We’d probably just take beans until they were done and then take the corn as long as the weather cooperated, but we’ll take corn if the beans won’t go or if we get some wet weather and we can’t get into the field to take them,” Johnson said.

Johnson, on Oct. 23, said he had a few days left of soybeans and after those were done, could finish up corn in about a day-and-a-half.

Part of the reason for switching gears mid-harvest is that Johnson said his beans were uneven in maturity.

“We had some uneven emergence this spring from lack of moisture and we didn’t get any rains to help get the beans to come up so we had some sprouted a lot later than the others,” Johnson said. “So we just had spots in the fields where it was really uneven and we had to wait for them to ripen.”

This field of soybeans was being harvested on Oct. 23, 2023, southwest of Alexandria, Minnesota.

At the same time, the corn was ready earlier this year in a hot, dry summer — at least until late in the season.

“We started corn on the 20th of September and since then we’ve had a bunch of days where it’s rained off and on,” Johnson said. “We’ve had more rain during harvest now than we had all summer to grow the crop.”

Johnson does not have any irrigated acres on his fields in the Alexandria, Minnesota, area. The rolling hills in lakes country have meant yields also are up and down.

“Yields have been all over the place. It’s the same everywhere around here. Sandy ground is terrible; Good, heavy ground is fantastic,” Johnson said.

He said yields vary from 75 to 225 bushels per acre on corn.

“It’ll go from nothing on the hilltops to ‘can’t believe it,’ in the low spots,” he said.

As Johnson said earlier in the growing season, it was a bad season for corn rootworms in west-central Minnesota and cut yields in some spots.

The worms weakened root systems and there was more “lodging” or corn plants falling over than he expected.

“We probably thought that we had some fields that we thought were going to do a lot better than they did. But once we got into them, there was a lot more lodging in the field,” Johnson said.

Adam Johnson and his father were harvesting soybeans on Oct. 23, 2023, southwest of Alexandria, Minnesota.

He said the

northern corn rootworm can overwinter

for two seasons, so even rotating out of corn for a year means corn will still be susceptible to rootworm damage the following year.

“There was a lot of (rootworm) beetles out this summer and next summer is going to be interesting,” he said.

That may force him to go to some corn with rootworm resistant traits next year and putting down insecticide at planting.

“With not having an issue with worms in this area before, not a lot of people were out looking for it,” Johnson said. “And once they emerged as beetles, there was a lot of spraying done at pollination just to keep the silks on the cobs, and that killed some of the beetles, but a lot of them emerge later than that. So I’m sure that they laid a lot of eggs this fall.”

As far as soybean yield, he said the first fields were better than expected but that diminished as harvest went along.

“I think when we’re done with them, it’ll be an average crop,” Johnson said. “Maybe 5-10 bushels below average on the corn.”

By
Jeff Beach

Reach Agweek reporter Jeff Beach at jbeach@agweek.com or call 701-451-5651.

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Corn rootworms menace and drought makes ‘short’ work of crops in Minnesota

AG Week

GARFIELD, Minn. — Like many Minnesota farmers, Adam Johnson has a new pest to deal with in 2023 — the

corn rootworm.

His corn crop in west-central Minnesota got off to a good start.

“Corn on good ground is still looking good, the cobs pollinated relatively well,” Johnson said on Monday, July 31. But there’s a “but.”

“There was a lot of rootworm pressure that nobody in our area has really ever seen root worm pressure like that,” Johnson said. “And there was a lot of fields that got sprayed and we sprayed probably three-fourths of the corn crop for worms. And I think they might have had a little bit of an impact on some of the pollination where they were really bad. They were clipping the silks pretty bad, but I’m hoping we got them stopped and killed soon enough so that the majority of the silks got pollinated.”

Rootworms are not common in his part of Minnesota— he farms just west of Alexandria – but the

University of Minnesota has reported that they are more widespread

this year.

“We’ve had a couple of winters that we’ve had a lot of snow cover and not really a whole lot of frost. I think typically when it’s an open winter and really cold, I think it kills off some of them,” Johnson said.

A lack of crop rotation also may be contributing.

“There’s getting to be very little small grain and alfalfa and then they’re starting to get more corn on corn also, which is probably making that a little bit worse,” he said.

Adam Johnson walks through a field of soybeans near Garfield, Minnesota, on Monday, July 31, 2023. He said the crop is short, but otherwise seems healthy.

Johnson pulled some volunteer corn out of a soybean field and could see how the roots on that plant had been damaged.
As for his soybeans, he said the crop is showing signs of the lack of rain that has put much of Minnesota into drought.

“Beans seem to have good pods and lots of flowers on them but they’re just short. Like to see him a little bit taller than that,” Johnson said. “But if we could pick up some August rains I think, you know, we might be able to get something out of them.”

Johnson does have a small amount of small grains in his rotation, spring wheat that didn’t get planted until after his corn. He said it’s “looking OK,” while still a few weeks away from harvest.

“Some of the small grains in the area look really good, some of them look really tough,” Johnson said. “Like everything else, it’s short this year. If you’re hoping for lots of straw, it probably won’t be there.”

Part of the reason Johnson plants wheat is that it comes off early and gives him a chance to work on putting in drain tile, something he does for erosion control and standing water in hilly lakes country.

A piece of plastic tubing known as drain tile is an example of what Adam Johnson will be burying in one of his fields near Garfield, Minnesota, later this summer.

“This year it’s dry and the crops are suffering from that, but typically, a lot of our fields will do better in a drier year than we will in a wet year,” Johnson said. “We have trouble getting rid of the rain with hilly terrain around here, that everything runs downhill and ends up in a low spot somewhere and then you can’t get rid of it. And if we have really heavy rain events, a lot of crops drowned out.”

A berm or catch basin along a field slope helps reduce erosion in one of Adam Johnson’s fields near Garfield, Minnesota. The basin will drain into drain tile that takes the water away instead of the water washing away soil.

He has been putting in berms or catch basins in low spots in the middle of downslope and then the plastic tubing known as tile takes the water away to a ditch but leaves most of the soil behind.

“It saved a lot of soil from going down the hill. We’re only a half mile from the lake here,” Johnson said.

Adam Johnson of Garfield, Minnesota, explains his new tile plow on Monday, July 31, 2023. He plans to put in more drain tile this summer.

He has a new, bigger tile plow in the farmyard this year, which can attach to a bigger tractor. It being a dry year makes it easier to put in drain tile.

“Because when it’s wet out, you’re tiling wet areas, so then you dig a hole and it’s full of water and mud and just miserable,” he said. “I don’t know how the guys who do it for a living do it.”

By
Jeff Beach

Reach Agweek reporter Jeff Beach at jbeach@agweek.com or call 701-451-5651.

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Farming in Minnesota lake country off to a good start in 2023

AG Week

GARFIELD, Minn. — Adam Johnson farms in the rolling hills of west-central Minnesota lake country, not far from Alexandria and its popular chain of lakes.

When asked how farming in lake country might be different, the first thing that came to mind was tourists.

“Mainly it affects how we farm, is we try not to be doing anything we gotta move a lot of equipment during holiday weekends,” Johnson said during the week leading up to Memorial Day weekend. “You don’t want to be out on the road with something wide.”

Adam Johnson farms near Garfield, Minnesota. He was out picking rocks with an ATV on May 23, 2023. He was hoping to finish planting soybeans the next day.

With the unofficial start of summer, the rural roads of Douglas County will be clogged by lake-goers pulling boats and campers.

Luckily, Johnson was going to be done planting before the holiday weekend. He finished planting corn on May 17 and planned to be done with soybeans on May 24.

That’s a big change from the cool, wet spring of 2022, when most of the planting was done in the last half of May and some acres had to be replanted in June.

Adam Johnson farms at Garfield, Minnesota, west of Alexandria, in an area with many popular lakes.

Johnson said he managed an average crop, better than he expected given the planting conditions. “I expected worse out of it,” he said.

In 2023, Johnson said Douglas County was “blessed with a bunch of snow” to help rejuvenate soils after a dry fall.

But it was a late spring with a lot of the snow melting all at once, which he said led to ponding on the fields. But when he was able to get into those fields, spring warmed up quickly. He said farming in hilly country, south-facing slopes will usually emerge faster, but not this year.

“Temperatures warmed up so fast, I think this year is the fastest we’ve ever had corn come out of the ground and probably the most even emergence, all those bottoms and hilltops all came at the same time,” Johnson said. “It looks really good.”

A shot of rain after soybeans get planted would be welcome but with good subsoil moisture, he was hoping for consistent heat and the weather forecast was cooperating.

The other side of that coin would be falling in a dry weather pattern like the fall of 2022 and most of 2021.

“Last couple of years have been fairly dry here — last year wasn’t as bad as the year before,” Johnson said. “I guess I’m kind of hoping that it doesn’t start into a pattern like that or we’re short for rain. So far, the soil moisture we have this year, it looks like it’s going to take us a lot further than the last couple years.”

Dave Johnson refills a fertilizer tank in a field south of Garfield, Minnesota, on May 23, 2023.

Johnson is a fifth-generation farmer who farms with his dad, Dave Johnson. He and his wife, Jill, are raising three children.

Adam Johnson also is president of the Douglas County Corn and Soybean Growers Association. The group supports various causes in the county and organizes events like promoting E-85, on May 29, Memorial Day, in Alexandria, and another on July 5 in Evansville, tied to that town’s summer celebration.

Those town celebrations will also bring the Corn and Soybean Growers out for the parade and the tourists.

“We do our best to promote agriculture,” Johnson said. “We’re in every small town parade around. We pull a trailer with our name on it and make the kid’s happy with candy.”

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