This year most regions of the Northeast have had an unusually early spring; warm conditions and below-normal rainfall. This has resulted in corn going into the ground in April in places where this seldom occurs, and much more corn planted by May 1st in places where April corn planting commonly occurs but only with limited acres. I’ve heard of more farmers than ever who essentially corn planting in April.
Is this the new reality of climate change and global warming? I think not. What has changed a bit is seed corn’s tolerance to cool spring soil conditions, not the least of which is due to much better seed treatments. The old planterbox treatments are not a good match with plateless and air planters, and it might not be a stretch to say that especially with air planters the pour-on powders are all but useless. I wish I could find that old research report done in the midwest where ag engineers determined that only about 25% of planterbox treatments remained on seed corn by the time the seed was planted by a finger pickup planter. For air planters it was even worse–a whopping 8%. I lost the report but well remember the numbers because they’re so shocking.
Plant breeders also have played a part; for instance, one of Cornell University’s corn breeders’ efforts have been to develop inbreds that are more cold-tolerant. Judging from how well much of this extra-early corn has done, their efforts have been successful.
But in the end much of the reason for earlier and earlier corn planting is simply that farmers have become more aggressive in their planting time decisions. Maybe I’m an old fogey–correct that; I am an old fogey–but I get concerned when a farmer 15 miles south of the Canadian border in Northern NY has 500 or more acres of corn planted, much of it in clay loam soils, by April 20th. Too many of our decisions are influenced by the previous year’s results. Plant a bit of corn in mid-April and it does real well? Let’s plant a lot more in mid-April this year! It’s been a while since most areas of the Northeast have had a long stretch of cold, wet weather in late April/early May. Sooner or later this will happen, though–we all know it will. Then we’ll find out just how good these super-seed treatments and cold-tolerant corn hybrids are.