While the spooky season may still be a few months away, every few years corn grower partake in shared whispers of what some believe to be “phantom” stolen bushels.
Researchers took to the fields to put the myth to the test and found the answer is always the same.
According to Connor Sible with the University of Illinois, “Every six or seven years, a University Extension program does a study on this, and the general finding is it does not exist or, at most, maybe it’s 1% yield per percentage loss in moisture. The one year of data we do have suggests it does not exist on the plant, and that’s the key thing. If you do a phantom yield loss study with the combine, you may see yield does decrease with time. When you harvest it on the plant and collect every kernel, we do not see it in our first-year data. We’re going to look at it again. Dry corn tends to shatter, and so I think it’s not a phantom yield loss. Yield loss exists. It’s yield that’s lost in the combine or due to the wildlife. The longer it sits in the field, the more prone it is to not make it into the grain tank and the truck.”
At the end of the day, the point is to make sure combines are accurately set for your field’s conditions. Then any worry of phantom losses will simply disappear.
