With harvest in full swing, an expert is seeing varying levels of corn yields.

Landus Cooperative Field Agronomist Dan Bjorklund tells Raccoon Valley Radio the average bushel per acre he is seeing for corn fields that didn’t use fungicide.

“ A lot of the yields are coming back in the 190s (bushels per acre), which is just shocking for people because we know break even is way higher than that, according to Iowa State (University), when they take into consideration all of the input costs, the current market price of corn. So that’s the first level.” 

Bjorklud points out the middle tier is those fields that had one application of fungicide had 190-230 bushels per acre of corn, whereas corn that had two fungicide treatments had 260 bushels per acre, compared to last year’s record yields of 280 bushels. 

Conversely, Bjorklund notes that soybeans are averaging 60-70 bushels per acre, which is far better than what he had predicted, because of the environment pointing towards more pressure on diseases. He urges farmers that have some concerning corn fields to consider combining them soon, because the weather is going to change starting Sunday,

“Any corn fields that are brown to almost dark brown, even some that are black looking in there that are with all of the fungus that are kind of messing around with the stalks, and the stalks are broken off, oh man. I know we’ve got just a couple of days but man I would get those fields out because 35-40 mile an hour wind that they are (weather metrologist) talking about, that’ll take that corn flat.”    

Bjorklund hopes that those fields with the potential of having corn lay flat are at a minimum going into next week.