Lose some, win some.

As harvest progresses, I take note of things we could have done differently that would have achieved a better result. The difficulty is any season can have once in a decade conditions, outliers that are not realistic to anticipate. '25 was one of those seasons.   

Several years ago, we were moving aggressively towards later maturities. GDU accumulation is increasing, and the growing season is getting longer. In general, full season maturities have more yield potential. Five to ten bushels/acre is a big deal.   

Then in '22 we had a September frost, prematurely ending the growing season. Full season corn did not yield better than the shorter season varieties. However, it was higher in moisture. This made it significantly more expensive to handle and dry.

We moderated variety selection in '23 and '24 to a more even balance between early and full season numbers. During that time an exceptional early variety was released that had high yield and fast dry down. For the most part, we have been rewarded for embracing change and recognizing opportunities early. We never put more than 20% of our acres to a single variety, but we were all in on this number in its maturity slot for '25.

Southern Rust was the Black Swan of the '25 thanks to high humidity, warm temps, and strong southerly winds. We spray every acre with fungicide, some twice. Full season varieties handled the rust fairly well. Early varieties, especially our new favorite, were decimated, yielding 20-30 bushel/acre less.    

This prompted us to critically analyze our variety selection process. As much as we would like to find an insight that would prevent this disappointment in the future, we are left to conclude we would have made the same decision. In this business there are limits to what we can predict. We don't want to be overly worried about the possible but improbable. We've always been an offensive minded company. Over time, this has worked for us.

Not to be overly discouraged, we made decisions and discoveries in '25 that give us confidence going forward. The new Hagie allowed us to late apply N and apply fungicide in house, improving yield and lowering cost. Despite higher application cost, distributing manure across more acres is proving to be cost effective. In its fourth year, our corn-on-corn test plot will help us do a better job selecting varieties that yield on our farms. One of the top yielding varieties was a conventional number, 40% less costly per unit than traited. We won't bet the farm on it, but it will see more acres.  

Every season starts with the belief that it will be the best crop ever. We don't have to be perfect for that to be true, we just have to make fewer mistakes. “Mistake” is another word for “learning opportunity”. By that measure, we are highly educated.  

Jim