Page 34 - Logan County Farm Outlook - Spring 2013

2013 LOGAN COUNTY FARM OUTLOOK MAGAZINE. LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.com March 21, 2013
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In 2012, Logan County farmers
planted 217,000 acres of corn and
119,000 acres of soybeans. Due to
drought, production was down on both
crops, with corn taking the beating at
only 54 percent and soybeans coming
in at 87 percent of 2011 average yields.
What makes those comparative
statistics worse is that the 2011 yields
were also well below
average due to
drought.
What is good,
however, is that
those yields were as
high as they were,
given the prolonged
bouts of extreme
heat and little to no rain at critical times
in both 2011 and 2012.
Last year’s aberrant weather caused
tensions to rise early and never let down
as the season progressed. The drought
was so hostile and seemingly hopeless
that when the seasonwas over and there
was some yield, it led many people to
ask, “What made it possible to get any
product(ion) from those fields?”
Some will tell you that it has a lot to
do with the rich soils that this area is
fortunate to have. And that is significant.
Deep down, those clay-based loam soils
held moisture where other types of soils
could not.
Expertswill also tell you it was drought-
tolerant hybrids.
Corn being of great
interest to Logan
County farmers, we
decided to take a
closer look at what
has been happening
with the development
of drought-tolerant
corn hybrids.
Nathan Fields, director of
biotechnology and economic analysis
with the National Corn Growers
Association, provided a lot of answers
to the most basic questions.
Fields said that seed producers have
had low-water hybrids for years. “They
are just being more robustly researched
and marketed currently,” he said.
When it comes to plant characteristics
that stand up to weather, what has been
achieved?
Fields said: “For weather (abiotic
stress), there is standability (stalk
strength), drought, cold (to an extent,
shorter relative maturities) are the main
ones.”
Abiotic stressors are nonliving
What about drought-tolerant corn?