Editor’s note: This is the last installment of the Field Snapshot series for 2024.

Planting season 2024 is officially over for the Field Snapshot farmers.

We followed Chip Bowling and Reid Hoover, from planting to harvest, documenting what they were experiencing and how they dealt with it.

Of course, the dry weather was a big issue for both farms. But each had their own challenges and successes. Now, it’s time to look back and look ahead.

For this final installment we asked Bowling and Hoover what their final yields averaged, their biggest challenges and successes, and their plans for next year.

Chip Bowling, field crops, Newburg, Md.

What were your final yield averages for 2024?

Corn: 78 bushels an acre, with a range of 25 to 200 bushels an acre. The higher yields were only in spots that held moisture, he says, and that wasn’t many fields.

Soybeans: Between 28 and 30 bushels an acre, with some fields yielding as much as 50 bushels an acre.

What were your biggest challenges and successes in 2024?

Drought was the biggest challenge, but this led to other challenges, too.

“The deer pressure is still really heavy,” Bowling says. “It was magnified by the drought this year. The deer still ate every day, and they were eating plants that still couldn't grow.”

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“Another challenge, anywhere I sprayed a preemergence on soybeans, there was a yield lag, a growth lag,” he says, explaining that he used preemergence on 400 acres because he was losing the ability to spray dicamba over the top of his soybeans. “I do think that this caused herbicide injury or stunting, which cost me more of a yield drag.”

Still, even with drought and other issues, Bowling was happy to grow a crop.

“Knowing that the yields are still there was a success. The products that I’m using, the seeds that I'm using, the growing habits that I've adapted to, whether it's no-till or fertilizer management, knowing that it still works when you have the weather,” he says. "A success is making it to next year, and we're going to make it to next year. It's not going to set us back as far as we thought it would."

STILL THANKFUL: Even with corn yields that averaged 78 bushels an acre and soybean yields that averaged 30 bushels an acre, Bowling will still be farming next year, and he considers that a success. (Photo by Shelby Watson-Hampton)

What are you planning to do differently in 2025?

That's still hard to say at this point, Bowling says, but one thing he knows for certain: “There's uncertainty now with what's going on, and there certainly is uncertainty with a new administration and new USDA," he says. “For me, right now, it is still a wintertime wait-and-see decision for me. I don’t anticipate picking up new ground or downsizing acres. It's going to be in corn or soybeans. And probably if I was guessing, it will be more soybeans right now just because it’s cheaper to grow.”

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Reid Hoover, dairy farmer, Lebanon, Pa.

What were your final yield averages for 2024?

While later-planted corn did better, Hoover says his fields averaged 22 tons of corn silage an acre.

“It's lower than other years,” he says. “We usually can get 25 or 28, somewhere in that range. But I still feel it was good for the amount of rain that we had.”

What were your biggest challenges and successes in 2024?

No surprise, but lack of rain was his biggest challenge, Hoover says. The unusually hot July dropped milk production significantly, leading to more stress.

Overall, though, Hoover thinks milk production for the year held up. His herd’s rolling herd average is 30,000 pounds with 3.8% butterfat.

"We suffered a little bit in the hot weather, but taking that into consideration, production was decent throughout the whole year," he says. "Feed was pretty stable, consistent all year, which I think helped production. For the first time in a number of years, we had some corn silage left over from last year. Now we're feeding mostly new. But we weren't jumping from old to new, so that helped production."

The mailbox milk price has also held up well.

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“It’s been right around $24 a hundred. We’d always like more, but that we can live with. It’s better than $18 or $20.”

Right now, in the field, he has completed cover cropping, hauled lots of manure, about 80 to 90 injected. Most of his cover crop was rye, which he is concerned about. But he thinks the fields he injected, he thinks it got a better start, even with lack of rain.

OPTIMISTIC FOR DAIRY: Although corn silage yields were down this year and summer was a struggle for his cows, Reid Hoover is ending 2024 on a high note. "We suffered a little bit in the hot weather, but taking that into consideration, production was decent throughout the whole year," he says. And it helps that his mailbox milk price is about $24 per cwt. (Photo by Chris Torres)

What are you planning to do differently in 2025?

All the farm’s rye cover crop has been planted. And the farm’s manure storages have been emptied out for the winter. What does Hoover plan on doing next year? He’s all in on corn silage.

“This year, we grew some full-season soybeans, which we usually don’t do. Next year I’m planning on going back to double-crop beans. We are losing some rented ground, so we want to get all the corn acres we can,” he says.