Southern Michigan Harvest Wraps with Very Good Corn Yields

Even with all the ups and downs of the 2024 planting, growing and harvest seasons, southern Michigan farmers have enjoyed some very good corn yields. Bart Marshall, Channel Seeds Field Sales Representative in Michigan’s southern 15 counties, says the yields have been well above average, exceptionally high.

“We had such a diverse weather pattern,” he explained. “We had a lot of drought conditions in certain areas in the southern part of the state, and then we’ve also got the highly variable soils that are less able to take drought stress, whether we’ve got sand and gravel and rolling hills. So, there’s a lot of different variables involved but all in all the corn crop has been very solid, above average to areas where guys will say it’s the biggest crop they’ve had, if not very close.”

Soybean yields are not quite as impressive, although Marshall says yields are above average.

“We got some real heavy rains, we got some ponding and some flooding and some areas that set some soybeans back because they don’t handle the water the way corn does,” he said. “So, we got too much flooding early and then we got into the real dry conditions. With beans they’re above average but everybody seems to be a lot happier with how their corn has yielded in general, a little bit happier with their corn than they have been with their soybeans.”

Even with the above average yields, he adds for many the yields were also more variable from field to field than ever.

Marshall told MAT, with all the in-field challenges like insects, tar spot, even drought, and less than desirable commodity prices, farmers got even more strategic this year.

“Instead of spraying the whole farm with a fungicide or the whole farm with an insecticide or whatever it might have been to fight whatever they needed, you spray just the infected areas. “We had farmers that sprayed the perimeter of their fields for weed control rather than spraying the whole 40 acres. Everybody put the clamps down on spending midsummer watching these markets and watching the weather, and it made us all get very strategic in how we kept our crops growing and moving forward.”

Hear more reflections on the 2024 season in the full MAT and Channel Seeds growing season update: