Audio Record corn harvest in southern Minnesota (story audio) Photos Corn transfer David Peters Larry Blaufuss View full slideshow (6 images) Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

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Record corn harvest in southern Minnesota
by Mark Steil, Minnesota Public Radio
November 2, 2004

Larry Blaufuss of Madelia transfers corn from his combine to a grain truck. He is harvesting his best corn crop ever this fall. Blaufuss says some of his fields may yield over 200 bushels an acre. (MPR Photo/Mark Steil)

Farmers are finding just about every extreme possible in their crops during the harvest this year. In some areas work has stopped because fields are too muddy. In many areas, soybeans are a disappointment. One crop though is surpassing all predictions. Corn. Mountains of corn. More corn than grain elevators can store.

Madelia, Minn. — No one is exactly sure what sort of biological alchemy produced a crop of almost freakish size. It seems a once in a lifetime mix of plentiful rain and a really long growing season, through mid-October in much of southern Minnesota, produced the monster yields.

	David Peters

It's so good some farmers are superstitious about their good fortune. They don't want to talk about the big yields because they're worried the huge supplies might sink grain prices even deeper than they've already dropped. Or because their landlord might want more rent money next year.

In an era when 170 bushels of corn an acre is very good, farmers are surpassing that with ease. David Peters manages the La Salle Farmers Grain Company from his office in Madelia.

"I'll get hung out on the yardarm if I share these great yields with many people but, you hear yields in the 200 plus area," says Peters. "In most cases people are very, very, very, very satisfied."

	Larry Blaufuss

A few miles north of Peter's office, Larry Blaufuss is busy with harvest. As if to keep with the year's pattern of strange weather, this day at the end of October is way too warm.

Even more unusual, a tornado watch is posted. Already thunder heads bloom over soon to be chopped corn stalks. As he steers a red combine through golden-brown corn, Blaufuss can't keep from smiling.

"I would guess this yield will be at least 20 bushels to the acre better than anything I've ever raised," says Blaufuss. "So it's quite a change for me."

The great corn helps offset what for many was a below average soybean crop. Cool, wet weather hampered development.

	Combining corn

Blaufuss says the same weather pattern probably helped corn fields. He says corn likes cool temperatures. For a time it looked like the weather was too cold. In September an early frost would have ended all hope for even an average harvest. Far from frost, September instead delivered the unexpected: day after day of summertime warmth.

"You know when you're farming you always hope for the best and plan for the worst," says Blaufuss. "Well, we got the best."

Blaufuss says Madelia seems to be right in the middle of a corn sweet spot in southern Minnesota. To the north early frost nipped yields. Farther south flooding rain cut production. But in this field, on this farm, everything worked right. For Blaufuss, it's the crop he'll talk about long after he's picked his last ear of corn.

"It's something you kind of work for all the years you've been farming. And think, well it's just never a possibility you'd get it," says Blaufuss. "You know, I don't have many years of farming left, I'm 61 years old. So it's nice to be able to do that once at least before you retire."

It's about more than just filling grain bins. The crop is a reflection of the farmer. If it's good, that means the farmer is good. Yields are up all across the nation and that big crop is pushing down corn prices.

For Minnesota farmers, the extra bushels they're harvesting will make up for much of the price drop. As Blaufuss' combine bites into row after row, a helper is already plowing the stubble under, getting ready for next year. It may be good again, maybe even a bumper crop, but there's not much chance it will repeat the magic of the 2004 harvest.

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