Wyffels supports Homes For Our Troops

PEORIA, Ill. — The Serving Those Who Served program was highlighted at Wyffels Hybrids’ booth during the Greater Peoria Farm Show.

Doug Nelson, Wyffels district sales manager, said the program, launched last year, benefits Homes For Our Troops, a nonprofit organization that builds and donates specially adapted custom homes for severely injured post-9/11 veterans to enable them to help rebuild their lives.

For every bag of W4588RIB or W7416RIB sold, Wyffels Hybrids will donate to Home For Our Troops. One can also help by purchasing a Wyffels “Serving Those Who Served” hat or T-shirt and all of those proceeds go to Homes For Our Troops.

Celebrating 75 Years

Wyffels Hybrids is also observing its 75th year in 2021 as a family-owned seed business. Bill Wyffels Sr. and his wife, Alma, launched their seed business from their farm in northern Henry County in 1946.

“We’re excited at Wyffels this year. We’ve had eight consecutive years of growth and it’s been very good to be working for a family-owned company that’s 100% American farm family-owned. The family is great to work for and we’re celebrating 75 years of Wyffels this year, so it’s been a lot of fun and we’ve had a lot of success on farms,” Nelson said.

Season In Review

Nelson, whose sales territory includes Marshall and Woodford counties in central Illinois, also reviewed the successes, challenges and takeaways from this past growing season.

“Probably the best synopsis of the year that I’ve picked up was from some of my counterparts on our agronomy team that this year was consistently consistent,” he said.

There was a cool, wet start in April followed by a couple of days toward the end of the month that provided decent planting conditions.

“As we moved into May we kind of had the Mother’s Day massacre as was the case the past two or three years where Mother’s Day has had a high incidence of some replants with cold, wet conditions. We were able to get finished the later part of May,” Nelson said.

“Crops came up and stands looked decent and then we got inundated with some heavy rainfalls followed by a hot and dry June. Then we went into the mid-July time frame and were inundated with heavy rainfall. It turned really dry in the beginning of August.

“For the most part, as we were hitting ear-set pollination time we had a really optimum window for the corn plants to put a big ear on and be set up for big yields.”

Challenges

However, there were bumps in the road ahead.

“When we were out doing early yield estimates and ear counts things looked really positive, but as we started getting to combine season as dry as it got and the amount of fungal activity that worked against us with stalk and crown rots, tar spot, fusarium and some things that moved in that took 20 or 30 bushels off from what we were expecting,” Nelson said.

“I would say in the Marshall and Woodford area, I’m not saying we didn’t have challenges. There were definitely some challenging fields. There was some downed corn across all of the brands from some wind events, but overall I have a few farmers that said they had farms that had the highest whole field averages they’ve ever had and a couple even said they had record corn crops this year. Others had some challenges.”

Takeaways

There were several key takeaways when looking back at the 2021 season.

“Areas that were able to shed those heavy rainfalls more quickly had a little bit better yield advantage,” Nelson said.

“Fungicide definitely paid. We’re not a company that’s affiliated with a chemical company, but we are definitely fans of growers utilizing a fungicide to just help protect the corn plant through the pollination and grain-fill period just to try to help minimize a risk of yield loss. In some fungicide strip trials we saw anywhere from a 20- to 50-bushel advantage for sprayed versus non-sprayed.”

There were also instances of crown rot that moved into some hybrids early on and by the latter part of August the infected corn died.

“So, growers had to be aggressive early on to harvest the corn that was falling apart, but the yields were still pretty good,” Nelson said.

“There were other areas in central Illinois that had some yields that were less than expected. There were some reports that as you went 30 or 40 miles to the west there was 180- to 205-bushel per acre corn. We were fortunate that we had some successes in our area, but there were also challenges.”