 All right, well, we're going to get started with it is ESU Extension Agriculture Challenges webinar. Our topic today is challenges associated with unharvested corn. As we all know, there's a lot of corn out in the fields yet across the state. And so what are some of the ramifications of that? Issues with harvest and challenges if you choose to leave that in the field until next spring. Our first speaker today is going to be Joel Ransom, the Extension Agronomist here in Fargo. All right, you'll let me share. Okay, how am I doing? Perfect, you can see. OK, so I'll give a short introduction to some of the issues associated with unharvested corn. And and there have been presentations earlier this week that have dealt with uses of corn other than for grain in the market. For livestock, etc. And our focus today is really just to speak about what we do with wet corn that's unharvested, it's intended for the grain market. So in the last crop crop update, 10% of the corn had been harvested. That was on Tuesday, that report came out. And that compares to 60%. So we're obviously behind and there's a lot of corn out there. I think field access to the rain and snow has been one of the issues, but also because of the very high grain moisture level. I think growers have been interested in trying to see if they can get some of that out of there before they move it into the storage than harvest. And I suppose also they've been very occupied with harvesting soybeans. But high grain moisture levels this year at this point have been associated with both late planting and a cold summer. So we were far behind on growing degree days. And I think we're all aware that there's been very little dry in the last two months due to wet and cold weather. So we got hammered in the summer. We had immature corn come our first killing frost in many cases. And then we had lousy weather for drying that down. There are some positive with corn relative to some of the other crops that are out there. First, I would say that the yields are relatively good. This is not going to be in every place in every of the state. But our trials that we've harvested today have averaged 220 bushels. So, you know, that's not perhaps as high as some of our previous years, but it's certainly a respectable kind of yield. And I expect that many farmers are in that same ballpark being maybe just slightly glow some of their average yields. I think in most cases, the stock strain's been very good. So there should be a little risk of lodging or eardrop. And those are concerns as harvest are delayed. And of course, the crops that are out there probably corn is the easiest to harvest when there's snow and cold weather. The ear that is the focus of the harvest is up above the ground. And so that's also a positive. So I wanted to just show you this is some data from one of the trials that we pulled off a few days ago at Ransom County to show you the kinds of moisture levels that at least we were dealing with. And in that hybrid trial, we had from 88 to 100 day relative maturities. It was planted, I believe, on the 10th of May. So certainly on the earlier side of some of that planting of corn in the state. And you can see from these data that we have moistures anywhere between about 25 and 36. Obviously, the stuff that's above 34 probably did not reach physiological maturity and got a long way to go to get things dry to a reasonable level. Test weight is a concern when you have immature corn. And so I pulled off these data and I did dry these down before I took the data. So they have been, these are not the wet test weights for the wet corn. This is actually dry corn. They may be a little better than this and you can come on this can as well. But we actually, I think these were about eight or 10% moisture when we finished drying. We don't have a good way to dry it just to our storage moisture. So they might be a little bit higher than this. But basically it looks like even the most immature corn came in at about 50 pounds or above. So that's, I think that's not super news, but it means that in many cases, the corn was mature and there's reasonable test weight out there. Now, this is a slide I borrowed from Ken, Dr. Hellevang. And I think the point here is if you look on the left hand column of equilibrium moisture content, you know, that's the moisture content that the grain will reach as it is subject to the weather. And so in the cold weather, obviously it is not going to dry much below that 21% out in the field. And then on the far right hand side, you can look at the amount of drying one can expect during the winter months. And you can see that this is percent moisture loss per week, that there's very little drying that occurs in November, December, January and February. And we just reinforce that point. I have some data from some hybrids that we monitored in 2007. And if you look at the data, oh, look at kind of the chart beginning at the end of October, you can see that that line becomes pretty flat, even though, you know, we're not talking about 30% moisture at this point, all of these hybrids came down to about, well, you know, in the in the mid 20s, but basically from the 11th of November to the end when we took a break for Thanksgiving, it looks like we quit measuring moisture. That drop was was pretty minimal. So one of the options that we want to touch on today would be what about since we got wet corn out there, the value is not as high as we would like. There are costs associated with drying it. You know, maybe one of the options is that we keep it over winter. And that's a lot of farmers that have a lot of experience with this in the state. Unfortunately, it'd be nice that this wouldn't have to be a decision. So I have a list of things that one might consider before they make that decision. And, you know, I think the first one leading the pack might be, you know, insurance issues. I don't have any expertise in that regard, but I know that insurance coverage is likely to end soon. And that could be a significant item to consider. The other would be more on the biological side. What is the stock strength, the ear health, is there insect damage, shank attachment, is it good and strong? Is it likely to to stand up during the winter months? And as I mentioned previously in most of the state where we haven't had any drought or those kinds of issues that I would say that stock strength, ear health and shank attachment strength is very good. I think another thing to consider would be deer activity. If you're an area where you get lots and lots of deer walking through, I would certainly consider that as a potential loss mechanism. And then you're going to weigh that against the drying costs and your capabilities. I know that many growers don't have high capacity drying facilities, and so that makes this decision challenging as well. And then I think we want to also consider that the corn that's out there is going to impact spring work and that will carry on to impact your operations next year. So that also would be a reasonable consideration. So what happens with the grain that's out there? What kind of moisture loss, as I think I alluded to earlier, that there's very little drying capacity in the air during November, December, January, and this is some data that we collected from a field in Steel County in 2009, and it bears it out pretty well that we really don't see much moisture loss until we get into it probably early March. And we actually, when we harvested this field, it was down to 13 percent. So that was a positive in that regard. These are some data out of Wisconsin. Five-year average is a little more robust data set, and you can see again December, January, not much movement in the moisture. They're probably a little warmer than we are here, and they started to see some moisture loss in February, March, it picked up, and then by April it was very, very dry. So what kind of yield losses are likely to occur from leaving corn in the field? This is some data published out of Wisconsin, a nice data set, and then look at the red bar, you'd see that over the course of the winter, they lost less, probably on average about 10 percent of their yield, and in 2002, which turned out to be a year with a lot of blowing snow and another issues that they had yield losses up to about 60 percent. Now the one field that I monitored over a year, it wasn't a high yielding field, it was a farmer's field that we just sampled during the winter months, and in that particular case, I did not see a single year loss in the areas that we sampled. We're not talking about a whole field, but it stood up at the year state attached, and there wasn't any loss during the time we monitored it. Okay, so I did a little survey on one of my talks a few years ago and just asked farmers that had kept corn over the winter what kind of losses they thought they had occurred, and from this you can see 20 percent, so it's just thought that there was no noticeable loss, we had a third that thought about 5 percent, and then we have what, about 50 percent, 56 percent that would 10 percent or more, and included in that group was 20 percent, but they lost more than 20 percent. I ask about what were the major causes, and third, the deer, so I mean if you're in an area where you don't have much deer activity, this would be a positive, large plants, 20 percent deer drop, about a third, and rotten nears about 20 percent, and I don't know as if we have a lot of rotten nears out there, although we did have a lot of moisture during grain filling that could potentially have got some disease started. So in conclusion, I think currently I would say there's a reasonably good crop of corn still in the field, 90 percent of our crop, a lot of acres this year, that is very wet, dry and weights will be minimal for the winter months, harvesting corn in the spring may be a good option, but I would say carefully consider stock quality risks of losses, spring challenges, and insurance issues, and hopefully we'll address many of those as we continue on. Okay, I'll hand it back to you Miranda, or did you want me to introduce the next? You can go ahead and introduce the next speaker if you'd like. Dave Frenzen, are you on? Let's see if he's joined us yet. So maybe Ken go ahead and you pick up. No voice. Ken, you're muted. I'll try it again. There you go. I'll go to the presentation mode, and are you seeing it? Can you see my slide? Not yet. Okay, let's try this again. Okay, I'll start out with kind of covering some of what I did on Wednesday for those that listened in on Wednesday, but focused just on corn today. One of the things that comes up as an issue with corn is with these high moisture content we can get enough, I call it surface moisture on the kernels that they will tend to freeze together and not flow. Not a lot of research out there that indicates what that value would be. I did some work on that area and then asked a lot of questions from farmers. With 28% moisture corn, I can be assured that if it is above freezing going into the bin, that with that moisture content, the kernels will freeze together and not flow back out. If we're in the 24 to 25% moisture range, there seem to be some bindings. They still didn't flow well. You had to get under about 24% to assure that the kernels would flow. It was also impacted by foreign material, so the more foreign material, the more likely that you were going to have flowability problems. Now, the experience in 2009 was that if we had corn that was, let's say, 20 degrees going into the bin, it stayed at 20 degrees, that it would flow back out. It's when the temperature gets to the point that it's an issue. We've had a fair amount of experience with the grain bags. Again, going back to our experience in 2009, if we were in that 25 to 35% moisture range, excuse me, if we went in frozen and kept it cold, it worked okay. However, if it was warm, there would be any some ensiling taking place. Even the corn that kept cold, guys were reporting that there was some odor associated with it, but once they got the corn out and started handling it, it seemed to be okay. 15 to 24% moisture, probably more than 20 to 24% moisture is an area that concerns me because there is the potential for heating occurring. We have no ability to aerate it or control the temperature at all, so it really needs to go in cold, stay cold, and be removed during the cold of the winter. Anything that's going to go into spring where we start having warmer temperatures really needs to be down in that 13% moisture range. The bags do not prevent mold growth or insect infestation. They should be run north and south so that we have even solar heating on the two sides. Select an elevated location so that you get some drainage. Monitoring is critical in taping any openings that occur, and it really should be, I think, thought of as a winter storage. If we're in that 25 to 30% moisture range, maybe rather than putting it into a bin, we should think of piling the corn where we can mechanically load and unload that corn, but I just remind people that even at 40 degrees, we have less than a month of storage time, so the ability to aerate it and keep it cool becomes critical, and we really need to think of drying that by sometime by early February. If we're on the lower end of the 20s, 22 to 24%, we can put it into a bin, probably again cool the 20 degrees, hold it over winter, and maybe we can hold that until March before we would need to absolutely have it dry. Anytime we're moving air through these bins at temperatures near or below freezing, there's a real danger of icing over the bin vents, and then it's critical that to not damage the bin, that we have the fill hole and the access door open to work as the pressure relief valve. There are a few bins that are set up with pressure sensors so that they'll shut the fans off, but those are not very common. If we're using a typical farm moisture meter, we need to keep in mind that those are calibrated for 15% moisture corn. Anytime we get to high moisture corn in the 25% moisture range or higher, that there's going to be an air associated with that measurement. Also temperature impacts the reading, and there I recommend referring to the operator's manual looking at what the operating range of that unit is. Many of them are not accurate below about 40 degrees. Any moisture variation across the kernel also will fool the meter, so if we're either coming out of a dryer or any condensation potential, that's going to cause an air. I recommend putting the sample in a sealed container, letting it sit for six to 12 hours, warming to room temperature, and then rechecking that moisture. Running through a high temperature dryer is a much slower process when we're doing it at 27-28% moisture content, so sometimes there's a real temptation to crank the heat up a little bit, but high temperatures, fast drying, fast cooling leads to broken kernels and a lower final test weight. There's a number of reports out there that in some scenarios the corn didn't have any increase in test weight as it was dried just because it was abused. Also if we have any immature kernels in particular, there's a potential for scorching or caramelizing, and about the only thing we can do there is to try to reduce the plentum temperature and see if that helps us. Number of questions, if we're making decisions as to what that drying cost will be for years, we've assumed about a 2,500 BTU heat requirement to take out a pound of water. You can use that formula then where we take 0.022 times whatever the propane price is and it'll give us our cost per bushel per point. As we're looking at some of the more energy efficient dryers, some of the new dryers, maybe we can do it a little bit cheaper. We'll change that to 0.018. However, at the colder temperatures I'm thinking we're probably going to be closer to the 2,500 BTUs rather than the 2,000. So if we use the 0.02 times a dollar propane, that's about two cents per bushel per point of moisture removed. Ten points of moisture is only about 20 cents per bushel. And when you start comparing that to the cost of losing corn out in the field, yes, drying is expensive, but it may not be as expensive as leaving 10, 15% of the corn out in the field. We're running through a lot of propane. We can make an estimate of how much propane by taking again 0.02 times the number of bushels times the points of moisture being removed. So in this example, if we're drying a thousand bushels taking off 10 points, we would estimate that we need about 200 gallons of propane. Getting calls already on test weight, it seems to be not necessarily following the rules or what we would expect to occur for most years. This table really emphasizes that the more mechanical damage that we see, the less increase in test weight that'll occur as that corn is dried. So normally we figure maybe a quarter to even a third of a pound increase in test weight for every point of moisture removed. However, with high moisture corn, we'll typically see more damage occurring during harvest, and we may only see half of that increase in test weight. Air drying is done quite a bit. A couple of limitations there. One is the maximum moisture we can handle is 21% moisture. At these cold temperatures that we're having, the ability to air dry just doesn't exist. And so at this time of the year, we're best off just cooling it to about 20 degrees, holding it over winter and plan on drying it next spring when temperatures are averaging above 40. We're not likely seeing a lot of rain anymore, but if we're piling the corn, only a one inch rain will increase the moisture content of a foot of corn or beans by about nine percentage points. So typically when we have piles of grain, as is shown in this one, you end up with a couple three feet of spoiled grain on the top surface. Elevators can sometimes blend that off and get by. Farmers, that's going to be a huge loss. So I discourage piling corn unless we can put some type of cover on it. More information up is on the web, and I would refer you to that site for a fair amount of information on drying corn on your difficult conditions. Thank you. Dave, are you on? Okay, Brian, why don't you take over? I need a kin to unshare. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. All right, so I was out in Beech, Bellfield, Hazen, and Jamestown last couple of days, and I've seen some folks turning their animals out into standing corn. And I'm hearing some reports like from Nebraska where we had a bad windstorm, and a lot of corn was on the ground, and they're being very cautious with if you've got 25 bushel per acre on the ground and they came straight off of grass of big foundering problems. So it can be done, but just a reminder that if that's what's on your mind, better take it slow and maybe just let them out there for a limited amount of time before you bring them back and then kind of get amused from the sharing part. Let me see here. All right, so last month the RMA put out this delayed harvest for wet conditions fact sheet, and it lists a lot of actions that can be taken, but the most important, contact your crop insurance agent and report a loss. Now, when it comes to corn, the insurance season ends about December 10th. That's for corn and soybeans. So anything that may or you may be thinking about doing before that date, a crop insurance agent needs to be consulted. They need to have calculated an indemnity or something like that beforehand before you can ever go in and do anything. The other part is, as you guys are probably aware, if it looks like you're not going to be able to harvest prior to this December 10th date, then an extension can be filed to allow enough time for you to get in there and get it harvested sometime later in the spring. I know North Dakota's dealt with this many times, but it's just a reminder you've got until December 10th to get in there and have it either adjusted or filed for an extension. Then after that, if it's one of those deals where you deem that you need to harvest it okay, then another deal, if it's basically a totally determined crop that's not going to be harvested because of too much damage, then you start thinking about all these other options, including just disking and under versus turning livestock out versus something else. Like I said though, additional time to harvest, you can on a case-by-case basis have it either settled or an extension filed. The biggest thing though, as I said, is this contacting your crop insurance agent if it looks like you're not going to have it out of the field before December 10th. The other thing I'm hearing on the drying that Ken Halevang was talking about is that there's some issues coming about on shortages in propane, that there's a lot of drying going on at harvest not just in North Dakota but all across the plains. A late wet crop has been the rule more so than the exception and therefore there's high demand for propane right now. I haven't heard of extraordinarily high prices being charged but I have heard of a lot of weights to get your tanks filled so that you can continue drying. So that's something to keep an eye on or keep in mind if it's coming to a point that you might need some more or you think you need some more fuel, call ahead and sort of plan ahead because they may have a backlog in terms of delivery and availability. So getting your name on the list or getting in line here soon might be you know might be worth your time and with that I'll mute myself. Great thank you. I guess we have time for questions and let me start. Brian so as I recall from a few years ago when we dealt with this issue that high moisture corn is not a potential claim for insurance. In other words if you've got 200 bushels and you've got 30 percent moisture corn they make an assumption that you have 200 bushels and you basically have the harvested. That's that's how I understand it. Now unless something's changed I believe that that's the case the expectation is that you're going to harvest it and again it goes back to a couple of things you can let it sit in the field and dry down file for an extension and harvest it and if any damage happens during that extended period and you're waiting for it to dry down well then that's something else then the or the other option is you harvest it and dry it yourself but as I understand it being you know 25 30 percent moisture is not grounds for an insurance claim. Okay thank you for that clarification. Miranda you made a comment I think in the chat box maybe you could just announce that over there. Yeah um so Brian touched on grazing standing corn there was a webinar um last week or maybe it was two weeks ago that focused on that so there's more information on there if you want to watch that um you can go to our web page to do that. Also with some of the insurance questions on Tuesday Brain Olson talked about a few of the insurance considerations based off the questions he's most frequent questions he's been getting from producers all across the state and that's also posted on our website and I can put the link to that on here. Any questions from anyone else? Do we have any growers on the corn over the winter before? One thing I'll say on that just keeping on over the winter it's pretty common for folks you know down in the Kansas and Nebraska area to store corn all the way through July all the way through to July and August when it's typically shipped out on the July contract and kind of the rule of thumb and it does get hot down there in the summer 100 degrees is been you know you want to put it away at 15 percent. 15 percent's been pretty much a magic number that as long as it's put away and kin can probably affirm that that 15 percent on corn is a good good number to shoe for for long-term storage. Yeah I guess I'm going to disagree with you Brian. If we're going into the warmer temperatures typically today we're looking at something closer to 13 absolutely nothing over 14. A lot of that 15 came from a very short-term winter storage and so and if you're shipping early summer being May into early June maybe you can get by with 15 but anything into June and July really should be down to about 13 and a half, 14 at the most. And would you put would you apply that same rule to bags too? I'm even more nervous on bags. The bags will follow whatever outside average temperatures are so here in the northern country we're looking at 70s to 75 degrees as you go south it's going to be warmer so I would yeah I tell people if it's going in a bag target for 13. So one of the topics that we had hoped to cover was that you know filled conditions and the impact of keeping corn over the winter versus getting out there and harvesting for potentially making some ruts those kinds of things. And I think we have a pretty good database that would suggest that these ruts can become problematic areas for more than just a season so we get anxious to get in and harvest if the soil is not in good condition and you leave a lot of ruts those can have some longer term impacts. I think with this cold weather probably just waiting a couple of days might resolve the problem of creating ruts. And then the other thing would be you know what happens in the spring we got this crop out there we eventually get it harvested we've got a lot of residue that's one of the blessings of corn right as it produces a lot of residue and then you've got the challenge of you know what to do with that because you've got another season on you and this year we saw a lot of burning residue and and unfortunately you know that was probably the best practice for some of those folks because they had so much residue and no way to get in until they got it incorporated and we didn't really get a break in the weather. But I think that would be the other thing to think about you know what is your spring strategy you're probably not going to want to come back with corn I mean that's an obvious thing because of you probably won't be able to get in in a timely manner but but you know having a plan for what the next crop will be and and how how you're going to deal with the residue I think is a really important point at this point as well. Yeah this is Ken and I'm gonna just echo some things there from previous experience and that was that it'll depend on the the soil that that the corn is on and it of course depends on the year but I've got quite a few pictures of guys that ended up with a lot of snow banks along the edges of the field and we need to keep in mind that our typical snowfall is somewhere in the neighborhoods of between 40 and 50 inches of snow which translates to about four inches of water. In the spring that's going to melt and the corn provides a wonderful shady environment to keep that ground wet and so I had numerous guys that were calling me and saying that you know the corn is at at 13 percent moisture but the field is still too wet for me to get out there and harvest so I really encourage people to think of harvesting before spring melt so that that corn is off and harvested at least the the majority of it before we start the spring conditions. And that has crop insurance implications too Ken because if you don't get the crop out before spring you get a bunch of snow in there and we have a later spring thaw kind of like we had last year a field has to be available to be planted to take prevent plant as the rule stands right now so if there's a standing crop in there and it's flooded all spring right now as the rule stands you cannot take prevent plant in that situation because it wasn't available to be planted because there was a standing crop so that's really I know there's some folks Miranda and I've talked to Brad at FSA and they're they're bringing up that concern but as the rule stands right now going back to your corn example if you leave standing corn we get a big bunch of snow blown into the field it stays cold doesn't melt until April or May and then it's too wet to get in there and pick it all the way to the end of May well if we go beyond our planting window then then prevent plant is not an option. That's a really good point thanks for making that. Do we have any other questions for Joel, Ken or Brian? Well thank you everyone for joining us today we will reconvene on Tuesday where we'll be talking about options for swath grazing some of the crops and forages that aren't unable to be harvested. Tuesday we're going to be or Wednesday we'll be talking about access to health and stress resources in rural communities and Thursday we will be talking about considerations for weaning calves this fall. So Miranda when you get the recording link could you just send that to me I know I can find it on your website but I'm also I have to do a little hunting so I'll share that with the corn council folks. Yes I can do that. Thank you. Ken, Brian, we'll