Ride Between the Rows: Part Three
An OXBO 8430 seed corn harvester is used in a field Oct. 9 near Mount Pleasant, IA. (Chris Lusvardi photos)
Editor’s Note: The Ride Between the Rows series provides a behind-the-scenes look at Beck’s seed corn production process in Mount Pleasant, IA, beginning in May with planting, continuing in July for detasseling, and concluding in October with harvest. For more photos and videos from the tours, go to the Seed Today Facebook page. For more information, see the upcoming Fourth Quarter issue and a story from the Third Quarter issue of Seed Today.
By Chris Lusvardi
Mount Pleasant, IA (October 9, 2024) – The Beck’s seed corn production season is steadily moving toward completion with about 70% of the fields near Mount Pleasant, IA harvested as of Oct. 9.
The first fields were picked starting the day after Labor Day, says Adam Smith, Beck’s corn grower manager in Mount Pleasant. With two pickers working near their production plant and another in a different area, Smith says work has been steadily progressing over the past several weeks.
Little rain has fallen in that time, allowing the corn to dry up on its own in the field before being picked, Smith says.
“The little bit of rain we got about a week didn’t slow us down,” Smith says. “If anything, we’d like to the drying if we can. This year we’ve had perfect weather during harvest. We’ve gotten a lot done so far. What we did earlier in the year is paying off.”
At the current pace and with little rain in the forecast, Smith is expecting seed corn harvest could be wrapped up within a couple of weeks. Even with rain, he says they can usually continue to work through it, so they will unlikely be slowed down much.
With harvest in full swing, Beck’s provided Seed Today with a look at the work being done to pick the seed corn from the fields and begin processing it at their facility in Mount Pleasant.
Yield Estimates
Smith has been pleased with the yields as the corn has been coming out of the field.
He says yields have depended on the hybrid, mostly going over their expectations.
“It’s been pushing us over our storage capacity,” Smith says. “We’ve been looking for places to put all of it outside bins, anywhere and everywhere we can find. We’re trying to keep up by hauling the seed out by bagging and processing it.”
Loads are being moved out to other Beck’s locations, says Blake Smith, production location manager in Mount Pleasant.
“We’ll be shipping out from now until planting starts next year,” Blake Smith says. “We’re shipping product to our dealers as soon as we can.”
Field Management
Adam Smith says they will soon begin picking from fields where crops were damaged from high winds in July.
“It has ended up where we weren’t hurt too bad by it,” Smith says. “We haven’t seen too much of a difference in yield. Quality wise and seed size has been comparable to what it’s been in the past.”
He notes they needed to be proactive with late season issues with bugs in the fields by spraying insecticides as needed.
“We needed to have a reason to do it,” Smith says. “Our integrated pest management slowed a lot of the issues down.”
Despite some late influxes of diseases, Smith says they were at the point in the season moving toward harvest not to require any further management efforts.
For more on the conclusion of the seed corn production season, including a look at the work being done inside Beck’s Mount Pleasant production plant, see the Fourth Quarter issue of Seed Today.
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