Growing Corn and Corn Silage on a Budget

Higher input prices and lower commodity prices have farmers asking, "What inputs can I cut back on to reduce my cost of production and not greatly reduce my yield?" 

This is a difficult question to address broadly, but I will try and highlight some key points. First, I strongly suggest you look at an Enterprise Budget for corn and determine your costs. There are a number of excellent corn enterprise budgets out there online; search your favorite state's Extension site for one. The Penn State Agronomy Guide has budgets for corn silage, corn after corn and corn after soybeans.

Top costs for corn for grain include land rent, fertilizer, seed, machinery depreciation, and pesticides. Obviously, lowering land rent would be nice, but if not possible, savings will likely come from machinery depreciation, fertilizer, fuel/drying costs, and pesticides. 

Be Careful Cutting Seed Costs

Hybrid selection is the single biggest factor you can control. It can have a yield swing of 70 bushels per acre or 12,000 pounds of milk per acre (silage). Farmers need to determine if yields can be maintained while lowering seed costs. Potential avenues for lowering seed costs include lowering seeding rates, switching genetics, and opting for fewer traits. We often don't have insect pressures that require control of all the above-ground pests (black cutworm, corn earworm, European corn borer, fall armyworm, stalk borer, and western bean cutworm). Corn rootworms are more of a concern for corn on corn acres that don't get rotated with another crop like soybeans or alfalfa. Herbicide tolerance is an individual decision, but if you spend the money for herbicide tolerance, you'd better plan on using that herbicide in your herbicide program.  A $325 bag of seed compared to a $200 bag of seed corn with a 32,000 seed drop = $80/acre for the $200 bag and $128 for the $325 bag. That's a saving of $48/acre; it will take about 11 bushels at $4.50/bu to offset that cost or over an additional ton of corn silage per acre.  Depending on what plant population you have been planting, you may be able to lower your seed drop by a couple thousand seeds per acre and save a few bucks.