In the 2024 growing season, weather played a major role in what farmers were bringing in from the fields. Knox County farmer Grant Strom says a takeaway from the last year included just how much environmental and planting dates can affect crops.
“When I talk about planting dates, just because corn is planted in April versus it being planted in May, doesn’t mean it’s going to necessarily be any better, but the way it worked out this year, the earlier you got your crop planted and had it closer to being fully mature before this dryness hit in September, the better off you were,” says Strom. “There’s a lot of environmental factors that affected the later planted corn.”
And with a lot of corn having been planted on or after Mother’s Day Weekend, Strom says it had to deal with conditions different from the earlier planted corn.
“Some of the late disease pressure heard it. We had aphids that came in and heard it. Then probably the biggest culprit was just the fact that once we hit September, we had no rain, and we were unseasonably warm.”
Strom adds that soybeans fared similarly to corn with early-season and short-season crops performing well. The later into the season the crop was planted, yields dropped off more.
