Erin Stackhouse, a Minnesota farmer and agronomist, says every bag of corn seed has the potential to achieve 700 bushels at harvest. An important part of her job is to provide for and protect that potential. A common threat to the health and potential of her corn are harmful insects – the northern corn rootworm.
Potential is great. But it doesn’t grow on its own. Whether you’re raising kids, raising livestock, chasing a goal or raising corn on a farm like ours, it takes care and commitment for potential to become useful.
It’s my job as a farmer to protect my corn crop from harmful insects and diseases that threaten its potential. My protection plan includes three key resources that I may or may not use depending on the problem.
- Precision Agriculture
- Scouting
- Pesticides
Measuring the Damage from Harmful Insects
Fall is harvest time – the true test of my work for the year. Harvest tells the story of every challenge my corn crop faced, and every decision I made, along the way. What comes out of each field, good or bad, is a report card.
Every row of corn I harvest reflects every moment we spent scouting, stewarding our natural resources and our land, protecting and innovating. I want our corn to reach its best potential. Our yields show what worked, where improvements can be made, and how well the farm weathered the season’s challenges. It’s exciting. And disappointing. And also humbling. Yet I wouldn’t trade that sense of accountability for anything.
By the Bushel: The Cost of Harmful Insects
Since the density of grains (ex: soybeans vs. wheat vs. corn) vary, farmers and traders use bushels to estimate crop quantities and yields. One bushel of corn in the U.S. weighs 56 pounds. But what is inside each bushel is what really matters. Not all bushels are created equal.
A bushel full of healthy corn with full, dense kernels is what a farmer wants to sell. Healthy grains get top dollar, and the buyer gets a good quality product. However, when corn gets stressed by harmful insects or a disease, kernels come in lighter and there are fewer per ear. It takes more ears of corn to get to one bushel—and that means lower profits for farmers, not to mention a loss in quality for the end user.
Protecting plant health from the day the seed goes into the ground until the combine rolls in the fall is how we ensure every bushel gets to its potential.
Crop Protection Plan Starts with Precision Agriculture
When I graduated from college, I started a career in precision agriculture, which is a farming management concept. It means that on our farm we observe, measure and respond to the variability in growing crops by using technology. Precision agriculture helps us to minimize resources and maximize the potential of each crop.
Incorporating precision agriculture onto our farm also helps us to be better caretakers of our land and resources. Thanks to technology like GPS, we can reach the potential of each field and each bag of seed.
We know before planting now which seeds should be planted at which depth, and with specific spacings that are best for that specific crop and variety. We are also able to identify which parts of a field are impacted by pests like harmful insects, and in turn only treat those specific parts with an insecticide. Years ago we would have had to spray the field evenly instead of only where needed.
This more precise approach has been fruitful for us. Our yield per acre is higher than what these same fields achieved a decade ago.
Scouting Fields for Harmful Insects
While our approach to farming continues to improve, we still face challenges. For example, one of the biggest insect threats in Midwest cornfields is the corn rootworm, which starts its life cycle as tiny larvae. The rootworm larvae eat the roots of corn before the plant emerges out of the soil.
If those larvae are not addressed, they develop into corn rootworm beetles later in the season. Those corn rootworm beetles literally bite through corn silks, which interferes with pollination. If a corn silk gets eaten during earlier growth stages, the kernel connected to it will not fill completely. That slows growth and slashes yields if left unchecked.
My first line of defense against harmful insects like rootworm is scouting, which is a fancy way to say “walking through a field to observe and assess my crops.” When I scout, it’s way more than just looking at my corn. I pull back corn husks and check corn silks throughout each field. I’m searching for signs of health, and for signs of issues. If I see those telltale signs of root damage or silk clipping, I consider the entire field. If the amount of insect damage throughout that field meets a specific threshold, that’s when we need to take action.
We Use Pesticides to Protect Crops from Harmful Insects…Sometimes
We never want to spray something like an insecticide to protect our crops if there isn’t evidence of enough insect damage at critical stages of crop growth. We only want to spray if something is threatening the potential of a crop.
For example, the seed in each bag of corn has a potential yield of 700 bushels. Pests like corn rootworm literally eat away from that crop’s potential.
We don’t get more bushels by spraying an insecticide. We protect the bushels that were already there when we planted the corn.
In our area, insecticides are actually pretty rare. But when we see corn rootworm beetle damage that gets to a certain threshold, we will spray an insecticide to give that crop protection.
Sometimes we even choose not to spray. If we had seen the beetles we have at this late stage of our corn crop just one week earlier, we actually would have had to spray an insecticide to prevent damage and protect growth. But because the corn got to a certain growth stage before we saw more beetles, we chose not to spray the insecticide.
Why Protecting Every Bushel Matters
At the end of the day, farming is about more than planting seeds and harvesting grain. For me and my family, it’s about protecting potential. Every seed represents a chance for growth, and every bushel represents the outcome of months of care.
From deciding whether or not to spray, to scouting fields week after week, to leveraging precision technology, my focus is on making each kernel count. Healthy crops don’t just mean higher yields for one season—they mean resilient farms, thriving communities, and a more sustainable food system for the future.
