Corn Crown Rot is appearing in fields, is one of those fields yours?

Welcome to Outstanding in the Field podcast. It is the third week of August twenty twenty six. My name is Doug Gucker, Extension commercial ag educator here in East Central Illinois. The corn and soybean crops in general are looking good. They're going to be area fields with amazing yields, and they're going to be fields with not so good yields.

The problem areas in the past are fields where the crops have been damaged by storm events, including flooding, hail, and high winds. However, now I'm seeing a concerning problem in some cornfields, Corn Crown Rot. The disease does not become noticeable until late in the growing season when corn is approaching the dent stage. This disease has been around for decades, but it's becoming more prevalent across the corn growing states. Why?

The researchers are not sure, but they know that this disease complex tends to occur in fields with wet compacted soils that put the crop under stress early in the growing season. What does disease look like out in the cornfield? Affected plants die early either singly or in groups. I am noticing that these diseased plants lodge easily, so you will notice areas of corn plants dying and lodging in a field. What I'm seeing is usually in the end rows, at field entrances, and low areas in the field.

The only way to know whether it is crown rot and not stalk rot is to dig up the affected plant and split the stem down through the plant root crown to look for discolored plant tissue. Healthy corn stem plant tissue should be white, not tan or gray in color. Discolored crown tissue is symptomatic of Corn Crown Rot. But to be sure, send a sample to the U of I Plant Clinic for diagnosis. Also in the news this past week, the USDA reported that FSA and NRCS client delays at their local USDA county service centers was due to the current staffing shortages.

In other news, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in their August Ag letter stated in real terms, after being adjusted inflation, there was a year over year decline of 3.7% in the district's ag land values. This is the largest year over year decline in real farmland values for the district since the third quarter of twenty sixteen. Another thing is is at the end of August, next week, the end of next week, the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers will be releasing their midyear update for farmland and lease rental trends for 2026 and their estimates for 2027. I'll have more on that in my next podcast. And remember, in closing, it is profit per acre, not yield per acre, that keeps you in the farming business.

Thanks for listening.