Nebraska 4-H "Aspects of Ag" - Corn and Soybeans

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08/31/2021 Added

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Nebraska 4-H "Aspects of Ag" - Corn and Soybeans Melissa Bartels, Nebraska Extension Educator

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[00:00:13.880]Hello everyone.
[00:00:14.420]My name is Melissa Bartels and I am an extension educator with Nebraska
[00:00:18.830]Extension.
[00:00:20.000]And my job is I work with farmers here in Nebraska to help them grow
[00:00:24.860]their corn soybeans and wheat.
[00:00:27.260]So today we're going to talk about two of the crops that we grow here in
[00:00:30.620]Nebraska, corn and soybeans. So let's get started. So here in Nebraska,
[00:00:35.480]we use 93% of our land for farming and ranching.
[00:00:40.340]That is a ton of land that we use here in Nebraska.
[00:00:43.850]What do we think we use the other 7% for schools,
[00:00:48.590]homes, roads,
[00:00:51.080]but 93% of our land here in Nebraska is used for farming and ranching.
[00:00:56.930]How big do you think the average farm is here in Nebraska?
[00:01:02.450]987 acres. And if you don't know what an acre is,
[00:01:06.500]we're going to cover that here in a second.
[00:01:10.220]So one farmer produces enough food for how many people, any guesses,
[00:01:15.950]155 people.
[00:01:18.050]That's probably more people than are sitting in your classroom right now.
[00:01:21.920]So farmers are very,
[00:01:23.180]very important because they make sure there's enough food for you in me.
[00:01:29.120]All right. So how big is an acre?
[00:01:31.400]Do we think it's really big or really small?
[00:01:35.780]So one acre is 43,560 square feet.
[00:01:40.940]So if we look at this,
[00:01:42.110]this is one square foot and we would have to lay down side
[00:01:46.940]by side 43,560 of these to make one
[00:01:51.830]acre.
[00:01:53.030]Another way to think about an acre is a football field.
[00:01:56.870]So if you've ever been to Memorial stadium and watched the corn Huskers
[00:02:01.580]play, that is the size of an acre about the size of a football field.
[00:02:06.980]All right. So the first crop we're going to talk about is corn.
[00:02:10.370]And we grow a lot of corn here in Nebraska.
[00:02:13.070]That's probably why we're known as the corn Huskers and the main corn we grow
[00:02:17.810]here in Nebraska is yellow dent corn. So if we look at our corn,
[00:02:21.950]this is an ear of corn and you can see here how there's dense in the Colonel.
[00:02:26.690]And so this is field corn, or also known as yellow dent corn.
[00:02:30.620]And we can see here, if we break the corn in half,
[00:02:33.710]you can see the kernels are all the way around and that corn we use
[00:02:38.570]to feed to our animals. So it's primarily for animal feed,
[00:02:43.130]but we do grow some sweet corn, but we are number one in growing popcorn.
[00:02:47.930]So if you go to the movies and you enjoy some popcorn,
[00:02:50.330]it was likely grown here in Nebraska. So if we look at our corn plant,
[00:02:56.030]our corn can get really tall at the top.
[00:02:58.610]We have the tassel that produces the pollen,
[00:03:02.670]and then the leaves that feed the plant. And then down, down here,
[00:03:07.080]we're going to have, this is where our corn is actually produced.
[00:03:11.250]So it's going to be produced on the cob covered by the husks,
[00:03:15.000]and that's going to produce our kernels, our corn seed. So across the us,
[00:03:19.500]we grow a lot of corn. 92 million acres are planted each year.
[00:03:24.480]So that would be 92 million football fields here in
[00:03:28.800]Nebraska. We plant about 10 million acres of corn.
[00:03:33.420]And so that would be equivalent to about 10 million football fields.
[00:03:38.010]And corn is planted late April to mid may.
[00:03:42.120]And we usually plan about 30,000 seeds per acre.
[00:03:46.530]And that grows all summer long.
[00:03:48.090]And we harvest our corn from about September to October.
[00:03:52.830]So farmers, the way they measure their crops is by bushels.
[00:03:57.840]So this is a bushel basket.
[00:03:59.670]So how many pounds of corn do you think create a bushel
[00:04:06.060]56, 6 pounds of corn create one bushel.
[00:04:09.090]So that's the unit of measurement our farmers use.
[00:04:13.500]So how many bushels per acre do you think the Nebraska farmer produces about
[00:04:18.150]190?
[00:04:19.320]So though we would get 190 of these bushel baskets per one acre,
[00:04:23.790]which remember is about the size of a football field.
[00:04:28.650]So how many kernels per year do we think a farmer gets off of
[00:04:33.360]one ear of corn,
[00:04:35.850]about 800 kernels and how many kernels per pound?
[00:04:40.020]About 1300 kernels per pound.
[00:04:43.350]So if we convert that to acres,
[00:04:45.210]we'd have over 10,000 pounds of corn per acre
[00:04:49.920]or 14 million kernels. That's a lot of corn.
[00:04:54.600]So if we talk a little bit about the history of corn from the
[00:04:59.130]1850s to the 1930s,
[00:05:01.710]the average farmer produced about 25 bushels of corn per acre.
[00:05:07.530]And so what they used to do is they used to go to corn shows at the county
[00:05:12.360]fairs and the state fairs.
[00:05:14.160]But what they were doing is they were looking at corn that was the most uniform.
[00:05:18.390]So it looked pretty, not the corn that produced the most corn per acre.
[00:05:23.520]So they would go and they would pick the corn based on how pretty it was.
[00:05:27.750]And then later on in the 1920s to 1930s,
[00:05:32.460]scientists observed how corn reproduces,
[00:05:36.360]so how it pollinates and that allowed them to start creating hybrid so they
[00:05:41.010]could pick the mom plant and they could pick the dad plant and they could get
[00:05:44.760]corn that produced more per acre.
[00:05:47.010]So he would get more kernels of corn per acre.
[00:05:50.490]And then as machinery became more available in the 1920s and
[00:05:54.900]1930s,
[00:05:56.280]now we could produce more because we had machines and tractors to help us.
[00:06:00.830]So they became more widespread and that allowed us to be able to harvest more
[00:06:05.000]and plant more quickly because we didn't have to plant all of that by hand.
[00:06:09.350]And we didn't have to harvest it by hand, which took a long time.
[00:06:13.460]And then in the 1950s and 1960s irrigation was developed.
[00:06:18.320]So if you've ever driven by a field and looked out and seen what looked like a
[00:06:21.890]great big sprinkler, that's an irrigation system.
[00:06:25.250]And that allows us to water plants, even if it doesn't rain,
[00:06:28.850]which is important because water is important for our crops. The other thing is,
[00:06:33.230]is we can also here in Nebraska, we have really good soil.
[00:06:36.830]So between the good soil and being able to water the plants,
[00:06:39.710]we're able to produce more
[00:06:42.950]so because of tractors and because of irrigation.
[00:06:45.770]And because we started breeding corn to produce more per acre in the 1970s,
[00:06:50.660]we were able to produce about 89 bushels per year.
[00:06:53.560]Or if we fast forward to today,
[00:06:57.250]the average across the U S we can produce about 166 bushels of corn per
[00:07:02.110]acre, but here in Nebraska,
[00:07:04.180]because we have the most land that is irrigated and we have good soil,
[00:07:08.740]we're able to produce just a little bit more.
[00:07:11.050]So we're able to produce about 190 bushels of corn per acre.
[00:07:16.600]And not only that there's many researchers still researching,
[00:07:20.950]researching how we can make more corn per acre.
[00:07:25.150]So they're still working on that.
[00:07:27.340]So now let's talk about the second crop that we grow here in Nebraska,
[00:07:31.060]which is soybeans.
[00:07:32.950]So Nebraska is number five in the amount of soybeans we produce
[00:07:37.750]compared to other states.
[00:07:39.460]And here you can see there's a soybean pod in the middle and behind
[00:07:44.290]that, you can see the soybean plant. So they're bushy,
[00:07:47.470]and they have a lot of leaves and they don't get very tall.
[00:07:50.380]So they don't get nearly tall as corn, but they can get about up to your hip.
[00:07:56.020]So that's what they look like during the growing season, but towards harvest,
[00:08:01.330]all the leaves are going to fall off and all that's going to be left is the stem
[00:08:05.440]with the pods. And that's what we're going to harvest in the fall.
[00:08:10.120]And what we harvest out of that is we harvest our soybean
[00:08:14.560]seeds. So for soybeans across the U S we produce
[00:08:19.120]83.8 million acres of soybeans.
[00:08:22.960]So that'd be 83 point million acres about the size of a football field field
[00:08:27.820]here in Nebraska, we produce about 5.2 million acres.
[00:08:34.180]And those are planted from late April, all the way to mid June.
[00:08:38.800]And we plant about 125,000 soybean seeds per acre.
[00:08:44.590]So we plan a lot more soybean seeds per acre than we do corn.
[00:08:48.400]And when we go to harvest again, those are going to grow all summer long,
[00:08:52.240]just like corn, but we're going to harvest those from September, October.
[00:08:55.920]So we harvest those in the fall also. So remember,
[00:08:59.820]how do we measure seeds for farmers buy bushels?
[00:09:04.080]So how many pounds hounds are in a bushel of soybeans,
[00:09:10.550]60 pounds create one bushel of soybeans.
[00:09:15.680]So how many bushels do you think a Nebraska farmer can produce per acre,
[00:09:20.330]60, which is about 3,600 pounds per acre,
[00:09:25.970]and how many seeds per pound? About 2,800.
[00:09:29.630]If we look at our soybean plant and I pull off one of these pods and I open it,
[00:09:34.730]how many seeds per pod
[00:09:38.150]do we get about three?
[00:09:40.730]So each pod on a soybean plant produces about two to three seeds
[00:09:46.220]that produces over 10 million seeds per acre.
[00:09:51.620]So like we said,
[00:09:52.880]how many pods do we think are on a plant about 27?
[00:09:57.440]So each soybean plant produces about 67 seeds.
[00:10:02.090]So here we see this as a combine and this has a corn head on it.
[00:10:05.960]So it has talents on the front that go through and cut
[00:10:10.970]the corn,
[00:10:11.630]and it'll bring that whole plant in and it'll basically chew it up and it'll
[00:10:16.460]get to the corn cob,
[00:10:19.220]and it will strip all of these kernels off this cob and then shoot out all the
[00:10:23.540]excess behind it. And it'll take these colonels and store it up in the combine.
[00:10:29.480]And this is a soybean head.
[00:10:31.310]So it's almost like a rolling pin that goes across.
[00:10:36.170]And so that will basically pull this whole soybean plant in,
[00:10:40.580]and it will chew all this up and collect the seeds, just like the corn.
[00:10:46.070]And here we have a planter. So that's what we're going to see in the spring.
[00:10:50.750]And you can see here,
[00:10:51.530]we have a tractor and that yellow piece up at the top is the hopper where all
[00:10:56.030]the seeds go. And then it distributes all the seeds into each row.
[00:11:00.440]So it can plant the seeds. And it, you can determine how deeper planting,
[00:11:04.580]how many rows. And it can also tell you how many seeds you're planting per acre.
[00:11:10.340]So there's a lot of technology here. We have the inside of a combined.
[00:11:15.020]He can see how much of the field he's harvested.
[00:11:18.200]He can see what his yield is in different areas of the field.
[00:11:22.700]He can see the moisture.
[00:11:24.410]So all of those screens give him all kinds of information.
[00:11:28.640]And here we have a video and this is how they used to harvest.
[00:11:31.820]So they used to take the whole cob with the husk and they would put it in these
[00:11:36.170]piles because remember they had a harvest by hand,
[00:11:39.110]and then as technology came along, they had tractors to help them.
[00:11:43.940]So here we're harvesting,
[00:11:46.220]you can see the soybean combine going through and it's chopping down the whole
[00:11:51.140]plant and you can see the seed up at the top.
[00:11:54.820]And we have a tractor driving alongside, and he's basically he doesn't stop.
[00:11:58.540]So those tractors drive right alongside him.
[00:12:00.820]And he transfers that seed as they're going. So he can just keep harvesting.
[00:12:07.590]And those tractors go through and they're going to fill up semis and here
[00:12:11.040]they're going to harvest some corn.
[00:12:14.730]So harvest time is very busy. You'll have somebody driving your combine,
[00:12:19.470]somebody driving your tractor, and then also your semis hauling the grain away.
[00:12:24.000]As you can see,
[00:12:24.630]he's hauling it out of the field and he's going to take it to the co-op,
[00:12:28.160]where they're going to sell it. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:12:32.800]And I hope you learned something about corn and soybean reduction.

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Nebraska 4-H "Aspects of Ag" - Corn and Soybeans

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