Harvest 2024

The crop season has had its ups and downs this year with floods and cool temps, but overall, this is going to be one of the best years in the last 10 years for crop production. The harvest season looks to continue that trend. 

Early planted corn matured about September 15 and is drying down nicely and will be below 25 percent on October 1. The National Weather Service has just come out with their prediction for temps and precipitation for the next 30 days, warmer than normal and drier than normal. This is good news for corn field dry-down and low temp drying. Typical field dry-down is 3 points per week when high temps are in the 70s, 2 points per week when in the 60s, and only 1 point per week when high temps are in the 50s. A day with rain often takes 2 days to get back to making progress. 

In natural dry bins, we will dry out 7-bushel points per hour at 70 degrees, 6 at 60 and 5 at 50. In a typical 10-horsepower fan and 24-hour day, we will dry 1,680 bushel points from the bin at 70 degree high days. If the corn in the bin is at 20 percent, this 10-hp fan would dry (20-14=6 bushel points per bushel), 1,680 bushel points per day/6 bushel points per wet bushel = 280 bushels per day. Hopefully it is a little dryer to start with so we can get the bin dry in about 2 weeks or we should let it dry-down in the field before combining it.

More grain goes out of condition each year because of storage at high temperatures than because of high moisture. With the warm forecast, don’t forget about the soybeans in the bins. Run the fans at night when the forecast lows are in the 40s. A 10-hp fan will cool 800 bushels per hour or about 10,000 bushels per night. This will also help to dry wet beans or corn in a bin from slightly uneven maturity due to field conditions. After the first cooling this fall, a second cooling should be done when the average temperature is below 40 degrees.

Replant areas for corn should be run through a dryer or sent to town as corn or beans more than 4 points wetter than the average will separate in bins because of the friction and density differences, causing all the wet to end up in the same spots which will cause them to start spoiling. A clump of wet grain the size of a basketball can cause a chain reaction of spoilage that can destroy a whole bin regardless of size. When it is run through the dryer, the wetter grain will dry more, and the movement will tend to mix them up so that they don’t all end up in the same spot. 

With a good forecast and high-quality crop in the field, have a safe harvest!