“I want to remind everybody that while the last few years have been good, this is kind of what a normal year looks like for us,” says Michigan Pioneer agronomist Josh Whelan. He’s reminding farmers in his area of North Central Michigan that while it seems like we’re way behind with planting, we’re really not.
As a matter of fact, Whelan says we’re still in the optimum planting window. He’s already heard talk of switching hybrid maturities, and we’re just not there.
“At pioneer.com, we have a GDU (Growing Degree Unit) calculator tool. It’ll show you the 5-year average, what we call normal. It’ll actually be forecasted GDUs. So, we’re actually forecasted pretty close to the normal rate right now. A little low, but nothing to worry about. Especially with the way the weather is looking next week. We’ve got 10 days of looking really dry, pretty hot, and a good wind. So, I’m thinking we’re going to dry down pretty good.”
Michigan Ag Today Chief Meteorologist Ryan Martin agrees, saying folks should be able to hit the fields early next week. Whelan says that’s plenty of time for this crop to get plenty of GDU’s.
“From May 15 to October 20, we’re usually accumulating about 2800 GDUs. To put that in an example, one of the latest hybrids we sell up here is a 110-day hybrid and that takes 2700 GDUs to get to black layer. That’s plenty of time, even for our later maturities, within the next 10 days.”
Hear my full interview with Pioneer agronomist Josh Whelan below.
