Page B—Corn Talk, Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 4, 2000
Catastrophic Crop Insurance
(Continued from Page 1)
costs, however. Insurance
pays 50 percent of yield at 55
percent of price. There is no
basis the price is taken
right off the Chicago prices
at, most likely, when the
price hits bottom.
This year, the payment
is $1.16 per bushel for corn
and $2.89 per bushel for soy
beans.
Wagner has owned the
operation for about a decade.
He farms with wife Linda
and their daughter, Mary, 7
and Guy’s stepson Bill, 16.
Guy moved into the lo
cation where grain elevators
and a shop now stand north
of Bethlehem. The 5,000
square foot building itself was
actually moved to the current
location in October 1995.
The past year was easily
the worst drought Guy
and the “old guys” he spoke
to, he noted have ever
Ever since Guy purchased the farm business from his father, Walter, in
1990, he has bought crop insurance for his 880 acres of corn and 400
acres of soybeans, for a total of $l2O.
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seen. Rain stayed 10 inches
behind normal near the end
of the growing season. Then
the rains came as a result of
Hurricane Floyd, which
didn’t help the corn at all.
Normally, soybeans
bring about 52.5 bushels to
the acre. This year, Wagner
harvested only 20 bushels per
acre.
Five-year proven aver
age is 154 bushels of corn per
acre. The past year he har
vested only 47.1 bushels of
corn per acre
Though Wagner calls
himself a Pioneer hybrid
grower, he actually plants
tests plots all over his opera
tion of all kinds of varieties,
he noted. He said he’ll be
“100 percent Pioneer” in
2000.
Altogether Wagner
grows about 300-400 acres of
strip plots using a 12-row
corn planter. He has used a
GPS satellite system for
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mapping harvests and runs a
yield monitor.
But for the past year, the
data collected could be use
less. “We might just take ev
erything we collected this
year and throw it away,” he
said.
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Some varieties that
didn’t do anything in extreme
drought don’t stand a
chance. In dust bowl years
such as last summer, Wagner
noted, varieties have to show
drought tolerance or he won’t
plant them.
Wagner recalls that
1996, a year with adequate
rainfall, was the best growing
year he ever had. Yields for
1997 were average, 1998
yields were about 10 percent
under the average, and 1999
was a disaster.
In 1996, the best year,
Wagner harvested 168.1
bushels per acre of corn and
61 bushels per acre of beans.
Beans endure droughts a
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little better and Wagner is in
creasing his bean plantings in
2000.
Wagner farms 1,200
acres. But each year acres are
being continuously lost to de
velopment. Wagner lost an
other 33 acres the past year.
The constant development
seems “almost unsustain
able,” Wagner said.
Because of the drought
and, later in the season, high
winds from the hurricane,
some ears dropped off. Those
that lay on the ground will
cause volunteer corn to be a
problem.
For Wagner, soybeans
are also a better crop to grow
because nutrients have been
built up in the soil with corn
crops sufficiently that grow
ing soybeans will require no
fertilizer or other soil inputs.
Wagner has used 100
percent no-till many years.
He’s had to use some light
discing to deal with slug
problems in soybeans, which
can cause huge crop losses.
When slugs emerge, they eat
the foliage off of whole
plants.
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Chestertown- Kingstown Tractor
Churchville - Walter G. Coale, Inc
Frederick - H.B. Duvall, Inc
Hagerstown - Antietam Ford Tractor
Kennedyville - Starkey Farm Equipment.
Whiteford - Deer Creek Equipment
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Altoona - Hines Equipment
Bloomsburg - Nichols Farm Equipment
Carlisle - R & W Equipment Co
Cresson - Hines Equipment
Easton - Forks Equipment
Glen Rock - Wertz Farm & Power Eq.
Klingerstown - Stanley's Farm Service.
Lititz - Binkley & Hurst Bros
New Ringgold - Eckroth Bros. Farm Equipment,
Orefield - Eckroth Equipment
Oxford - Deer Creek Equipment
Quarryville - A.L. Herr & Brothers
Richland - Lebanon Valley Implement
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They also deep till to
break up compaction a
problem at the farm since
Wagner purchased it from
the former owner.
“I’m a firm believer in
no-till,” noted Wagner.
Wagner prefers growing
corn, he said. “I prefer
watching corn grow,” he
said, and was devastated by
what he had to witness last
summer. “It hurts your feel
ings.”
He thinks a large per
centage of work, because of
drought, is completely
wasted.
As for insect controls,
corn borer is not a big prob
lem for the farm, Wagner
noted. Though he has been
planting Roundup Ready
soybeans for three years, the
farm, because of the biogenic
crops controversy, is switch
ing back to conventional soy
beans.
“If we can’t sell them,”
he said, because of the
biogenic scare, “we’ll be in
real trouble.” Until the in
dustry comes up with strate-
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410-778-1640
800-286-8292
301-662-1125
301-791-1200
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814-742-8171
570-784-7731
717-243-2686
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610-252-8828
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570-648-2088
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610-932-8858
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