Consider Drying Remaining Corn Crop

Oct 12, 2021

By Katie Pratt

High energy costs and wet weather have delayed the harvest of what is expected to be a record corn crop for the state. To preserve yield and quality, a University of Kentucky agricultural engineer is recommending producers consider harvesting and mechanically drying corn still left in the field.

“Wet weather and higher energy costs certainly have the potential to squeeze producers’ profits, especially if additional wet weather further delays harvest and losses climb above the average of 5%,” said Sam McNeill, agricultural engineer in the UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. “Even with this season’s high energy prices, most producers could benefit from heated air drying their crop by at least five moisture points.”

The National Agricultural Statistics Service is projecting Kentucky corn producers will harvest 268 million bushels this fall with average yields around 185 bushels per acre. If these production levels are realized, it would make the 2021 crop the largest on record.

McNeill calculated yields of 150, 200 and 250 bushels per acre by current corn prices of $5 a bushel and projected harvest losses of 2%, 5% and 8%. He then compared them to the costs associated with heated air drying the corn by five and 10 moisture points using current energy prices and average dryer efficiency. He found that producers can expect returns from drying the corn at least five moisture points if they anticipate their harvest losses will be 5% or greater. Gains from drying the crop by five points could range from $6 to $48 per acre, depending on yield when all costs are considered.

“This range of values is anticipated this season, but producers can use their own values to quickly estimate a meaningful comparison for their operation,” McNeill said. “The value and satisfaction of knowing the crop is safely out of the field depends on individual operations.”

McNeill has posted a spreadsheet to the UK Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering website to help producers determine the best options for their operation. It is available at https://www.uky.edu/bae/grain-storage-systems.

Source : uky.edu

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.