Joe Lauer UW-Extension Corn Agronomist
Department of Agronomy
UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
(608) 263-7438
(608) 262-1390
jglauer@wisc.edu
Bringing in the Wisconsin corn harvest. University corn yield trials around the state are looking good this fall according to Joe Lauer.
3:02 – Total time
0:18 – State corn trial yields
0:42 – Things that affect yield
1:10 – The Wisconsin corn crop
2:02 – Look of corn production in the future
2:19 – Exciting careers in agronomy
2:53 – Lead out
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joe_lauer_2011_corn_crop_summary.mp3
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Transcript
Sevie Kenyon: Joe, welcome to our microphone. Joe, you maintain corn yield trials, on behalf of the university, how are those yields looking this season?
Joe Lauer: I think the trials are coming in very good. The yields, so far, have been highest at Lancaster, running about two twenty to two hundred and forty bushels per acre. And as you go around the state in general we’ve had good to excellent yields, especially as you go north… the other side of Chippewa Falls this year I think we averaged a hundred and eighty to a hundred and ninety bushels.
Sevie Kenyon: Joe, what factors affect yield?
Joe Lauer: Taking time to pick good hybrids that have a good disease resistance and pest resistance package is important. Then there are things that we can do management-wise…things like the number of plants that you put out, row spacing, and finally the ace up the sleeve is really weather and Mother Nature and what she throws at us at in any particular year.
Sevie Kenyon: Joe, can you give us a little thumbnail sketch of what Wisconsin corn production looks like?
Joe Lauer: We plant, every year, about four million acres of corn in this state. Of those four million acres, about a million acres or so goes into corn silage and then the other three million acres are harvested for grain, which is usually about five hundred thousand acres for high moisture grain. The two and a half million acres left is usually for dry grain. That dry grain, about 40 percent of that dry grain is marketed and sold to ethanol plants within the state. Another 40 percent is used by our dairy industry and so that leaves about 10 to about 20 percent that’s really exported out of the state and that number has been going down over time because of what ethanol has done, ah with the dry grain market.
Sevie Kenyon: Joe, what’s corn production going to look like down the road?
Joe Lauer: You’re going to see more and more corn hybrids with very specific traits. We are able to develop very specific hybrids now without much of a yield loss.
Sevie Kenyon: Joe, what do you see for our youth interested in agricultural careers?
Joe Lauer: I keep telling a lot of people, especially younger people, that today’s a great time to be an agronomist. We have so many options, so many things being talked about on ways to manage crops in a more environmentally friendly way then what we were able to do 20 years ago. It’s a type of career that benefits everybody. I mean, we need to grow food and this, the challenge to be able to feed nine billion people by the year 2050… I mean we’ve got seven billion people right now. These challenges are just going to continue.
Sevie Kenyon: We’ve been visiting with Joe Lauer Department of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin, in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Madison, Wisconsin…. And I’m Sevie Kenyon.