High moisture levels in corn have caused some farmers to slow down on their rapid pace of harvesting.

Dallas County ISU Extension Field Agronomist Meghan Anderson tells Raccoon Valley Radio that despite there being drought conditions for a lot of the growing season and now into the harvest season, there was a timely rainfall that came in August that really pushed corn back and made for quite a bit of moisture in the crop.

“And really resulted in that end of the growing season, slowing down again, putting in a lot of grain fill, and just lengthening out that reproductive stage. And I think that’s partially what has happened here is that we are having a lot higher yields than what we would’ve expected in drought conditions. And I think that partially came from the timely rainfall that we did receive.”     

Anderson points out several options farmers have to dry down corn, includes natural air drying with an aerated vent storage bin, taking the grain to a cooperative and having them dry it down, drying corn on your own farm, or letting it stay in the field to dry. Anderson notes allowing corn to stay in the fields to naturally dry down can be risky.“Kind of, on average, weekly drying in November is typically going to be like a percent a week and in October it’s going to be like 2.5 percent a week. And so if we’ve got 22 percent moisture of corn and we need to get it down to about 15 percent moisture or seven percent is a lot to ask for in in-field drying this time of year.” 

She encourages farmers to contact ISU Extension when considering drying options for corn.