Last week’s severe thunderstorm featured wind gusts of 70-80 mph, strong enough to uproot trees and knock down power lines.
For area corn producers, the storm's timing couldn't have been worse, according to Steve Nelson, an agronomist with Tri County Ag Service in Schuyler.
“From knee-high corn to tassel corn, that’s when corn is the most vulnerable to green snap,” said Nelson. “And that’s where virtually all our corn was.”
Green snap is the term for when cornstalks are broken, in this case by high winds. Once a stalk snaps, there’s no going back.
“Big thing on corn is, once that plant’s broken its zero yield on that plant,” Nelson said. “It’s not going to produce an ear.”
At this point, experts from Platte and Colfax counties say it’s hard to tell how much damage was done, partly because of the breadth and endurance of the storm.
“(The storm) cut a swath across from Columbus through lower Colfax County,” said Nelson. “About 15 miles wide, and it kind of angled from Columbus to Scribner, cuts right into Dodge County and heads into Iowa.”
Nelson just got started evaluating fields around Richland on Monday and said he’s seen fields with 5 to 10 percent green snap and others with more extensive damage.
“One field had 25-50 percent broken off. That’d be a 50- to 100-bushel yield. That’s huge,” he said. “That’s $300 to $400 an acre.”
Bruce Coffey, executive director at the Colfax County Farm Service Agency, said he’s seen fields with as much as 75 percent green snap.
“There’s not a lot that have 75 percent green snap, but there’s some,” he said.
Chris Hoffman, executive director at the Platte County Farm Service Agency, said that while snapped stalks are a definite loss, bent stalks are harder to call at this point.
“A lot of the corn that laid down came back up,” said Hoffman. “We won’t know until we get further into the growing season.”
In some cases, Coffey said, bent stalks produce ears of corn.
“Some laid over and didn’t snap, but the agronomist doesn’t know if it’s going to produce,” he said. “But time will tell.”
What can be fatal to some stalks could be an opportunity for others, according to Colfax County Extension educator Aaron Nygren.
“If the other plants are broken, that stalk may have more sunlight,” Nygren said. “Some of the (standing) plants may put out a slightly larger ear to compensate.”
Nygren said he's also received reports of damaged farm structures and overturned irrigation pivots.
According to Coffey, the threshold for emergency assistance for farmers is 25 percent crop loss. At this point, crop loss is only estimated at 15 percent.
In a year when grain producers are already expecting a loss, Coffey said a producer’s outcome after this storm may be determined by whether they bought crop insurance.
“(Producers with insurance) won’t be devastated. They’ll come out OK. They’ll survive,” said Coffey. “But if they don’t have insurance, they’ll be hurting.”
“Hopefully we don’t get any more storms,” he added.
Source - http://columbustelegram.com
