by BETTER FARMING STAFF

When it comes to corn and soybeans, farmers in Chatham-Kent take the prize for the highest yielding crops in Ontario in 2015, according to maps published last week by Agricorp.

Province-wide maps for both crops depict large portions of the municipality’s northwestern area covered in powder blue, used to identify soybean yields of 50 to 60 bushels per acre and corn yields of 210 to 240 bushels per acre.

There are even two spots of royal blue on the corn map indicating small areas where more than 240 bushels of corn were harvested. Those royal blue spots were much larger on the soybean maps, and indicated yields of 60-plus bushels of beans per acre.

“I can’t say they were bin busters,” says Clayton Crow, who farms corn, soybeans and wheat in the former township of Dover near one of those royal blue hotspots. “They were just average to good yields.” Just how good, Crow was reluctant to say. “Sometimes when it gets into the papers or whatever it is, it’s blown out of proportion.”

Corn was “exceptionally good,” he says, better than average yields. Wheat, he says, was good also.

“We had ideal conditions,” he says, noting yields “are always good in (the former) Dover township.”

Brent McFadden, who farms 200 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat south of Dresden, says his corn “turned out really good,” and estimates his average yield was around 220 bushels. Beans were average, he says. Wheat yields were also high but fusarium reduced the quality.

In the former Romney township, the municipality’s southern-most section near Essex County, however, it was quite a different story, says Ken Dawson.

Dawson was in an area where Agricorp had extended the planting season deadline by an extra week; he had to plant and replant soybeans because of sodden fields, he recalls. He remembers seeing whitecaps in one drowned cornfield, but yields recovered to some degree.

With corn, “I was surprised at how well the yields came,” Dawson says, noting that both corn and soybean yields were a little below average.

Wheat, however, was a disaster, he says. “It would have been a really good yield if we didn’t get fusarium in it.”

Nevertheless, he’s happy with the yields on his 550 acres, given the challenges he faced.

“It was a good year for corn, provincially,” says Jim Zavitz, Agricorp senior industry specialist. Overall, the province’s corn yield average was 177 bushels an acre, slightly above the long term average of 163 bushels an acre.

Soybeans too were slightly above average, with provincial yields averaging 45 bushels an acre, above the long-term average of 43.6 bushels.

Zavitz says while there was fusarium in wheat from Chatham-Kent and Essex, in other areas of the province crop yields were generally average with no quality problems.

Zavitz says claims for corn totaled $7.5 million, which he described as “very low.”

He attributed many of those claims to a late spring frost that caused some crop reseeding. “Other than that, we had some areas that reported dry conditions while other areas had excess rain, so kind of a mixed bag,” he says.

Claims over the past decade have hovered around average, he adds, and premiums have gone down compared to what they were 10 years ago, “just because the crop insurance fund is in a pretty good position.”

He couldn’t predict whether the premiums for corn and soybeans would be lower for 2016.

“I haven’t seen the (new) numbers compared to last year,” he says, noting the numbers will be released shortly to Agricorp staff. Farmers will see them in their renewals in late February or early March.

Agricorp is an Ontario Crown agency that delivers risk management programs to the provincial agriculture industry. BF