One of the first things I do every fall after harvest is to download the load logs from the grain cart. Then I manually enter moistures from the grain pit log book so that I can determine what our yields were. We use these yields for our crop insurance production report as well as to determine actual splits between our different entities. This year was no different, and that task was completed this week.

What I found on our farm is that corn was slightly above expectations, while soybeans were a little below expectation. Second crop soybeans came in between 20 and 30 bushels per acre, decent considering they were frosted. The field I irrigated a couple times to ward off the frost for an extra week or ten days was north of 40 bpa.

Sometimes we wonder what we’re doing wrong when we hear some of the ‘coffee shop’ yields, but our findings were confirmed when a banker stopped by. He asked me how yields were. After answering, I asked what other farmers were telling him. He told me he has pretty much heard the same thing most places.

2023 seed choices

I really try to reserve judgment on hybrids/varieties until we get this data crunched. Yield monitor data just doesn’t cut it for me. There can be so much variation (especially in corn) between hybrids. This variation is magnified in split-planter situations. We try to calibrate the yield monitor in each field and then leave it alone so the map is consistent.

The actual (scaled) yield can be reconciled into the data at the end. I have always preferred to have a map that shows the good and bad areas of the field even if the yield is wrong, rather than a map with data chopped up because of re-calibrations. This year we did a better job of taking time to weigh strips in fields where the planter was split with two hybrids.

We will lean heavily on those and other notes when selecting seed for 2023.