How is corn planted? Today we introduce modern corn planting methods

With huge stockpiles and falling prices, the returns from growing corn are getting lower and lower, and farmers are even starting to lose money. Many farmers are confused: can corn still be grown? What kind of corn is more cost-effective to grow?

Recently, reporters visited crop farmers, specialized growers and experts in succession to jointly explore the future way out for corn.

Current situation: few are happy, many are worried

Du Weiyuan is from Dudian Village, Shuzhuang Township, Shangshui County, and this year he planted more than 800 mu of corn. The corn cobs he grew were large and the kernels plump, and this year he had a bumper harvest, with yield per mu reaching more than 1,600 jin. He said: "The reason I got such a good harvest is that I planted the good variety Zhengdan 1002."

This variety is a new corn variety bred by the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences, with large kernels, high yield, and it does not fall over in strong winds. This year, due to the weather, many corn plants lodged, but the corn Du Weiyuan planted did not lodge. He said: "No matter whether the corn price is high or low, if the per-unit yield is high, the returns will still be much higher."

On September 25, less than 100 m from Du Weiyuan's cornfield, farmer Zhang Liuzhu was harvesting the 3 mu of corn he had planted. The corn cobs he grew were small, and many cobs had only a few scattered kernels. He said: "I estimate the yield per mu is only about 800 jin. I work away from home and rarely tend it; when it was dry I did not irrigate or fertilize." He sighed that the returns from corn are low, and taking a few days off to come back and irrigate the land is not worth it.

Growing ordinary corn makes some happy and others worried, while those growing whole-plant silage corn and specialty corn are all delighted. Zhao Shujie is the general manager of Zhongzhu Grass Co., Ltd., and has contracted more than 50,000 mu of silage corn in Xiping, Gongyi, Zhongmu, Shenqiu and other places, and has been busy for days harvesting and baling it directly.

In Shangshui County, after doing the accounts, a farmer told the reporter: "Calculated at the current more than seven mao per jin, if this year's corn yield per mu is 1,000 jin, after deducting the costs of plowing, fertilizer, seed, mechanical harvesting and so on, it is exactly break-even with neither loss nor profit."

However, this year it is really not easy to achieve a yield per mu of more than 1,000 jin. Large households who transfer land also have land rent, making it even harder to make money. No wonder large growers like Du Weiyuan also say: "Making money growing corn this year is hard."

Diagnosis: where does the crux of corn lie

Compared with autumn crops such as peanuts and soybeans, the comparative returns from growing corn are relatively low, and the direct reason is of course the low corn price. At the "2016 Autumn Grain and Feed Grain Seminar" held at the Zhengzhou Grain Wholesale Market on September 20 this year, experts generally believed that there is still a long way to go in digesting China's old corn in the future, and that the decline in corn prices is already the general trend. At present, the corn price in the province is around 0.75 yuan per jin.

In this regard, Tang Baojun, a post expert in the provincial corn industry system and a researcher at the Grain Crops Institute of the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences, believes: "On the surface, corn appears to have the problem of lower returns caused by falling prices, but in fact there is a deeper reason, which is that the cost of corn production is too high and the comparative returns are low."

The smallholder system of one household farming on its own is the most important reason among them. Li Hai, a farmer in Yangfeng Township, Suiping County, plants 5 mu of corn. Both he and his wife work away from home; they return home once when planting and once when harvesting, and normally do not come back at all to manage it. He said: "Never mind low yields; managing it too much costs too much and is not worthwhile. After all the calculations, relying on heaven to harvest is more cost-effective."

This is the common contradictory mentality of farmers under the smallholder system. Because of the lack of economies of scale, farmers' production costs for growing corn are relatively high, so naturally the comparative benefits are low, and everyone generally feels that growing corn does not make money or even loses money.

At the same time, corn's own planting structure also has major problems: too much is planted of what the market does not need, while the area planted of what the market needs is small. In our province, it is basically a single variety, with one variety dominating. Farmers are accustomed to growing ordinary corn, resulting in a surplus of ordinary corn, while silage corn and specialty corn cannot effectively meet market demand. For example, Nanyang Tianguan Group processes ethanol gasoline and needs large amounts of high-starch corn. However, our province lacks large-scale planting of high-starch corn, so enterprises can only choose ordinary low-starch corn.

Way out: how to grow corn in the future

Now that corn prices are sluggish and stockpiles are relatively large, it is imperative to appropriately reduce corn. For corn planting, falling corn prices are both a challenge and an opportunity. Tang Baojun said: "In the structural reform of the agricultural supply side, autumn grain requires reducing the corn planting area and increasing the planting area of crops such as peanuts and soybeans, but corn itself also needs structural reform. Reducing ordinary corn and increasing the planting area of silage corn and specialty corn is an important direction for corn's way out."

At present, our province's corn inventory is not large, and it can basically produce and sell on its own. In our province's corn consumption structure, 70% is used for feed. Our province plans that by 2020, the planting area of silage corn will reach 4 million mu to 5 million mu. At present, the province's silage corn is only 600,000 mu; although it has increased by 36% compared with last year, there is still huge room for development.

After fermentation, silage corn can improve milk quality and also improve beef quality. The returns are high, and it also solves the problem of straw burning. Tang Baojun said: "Our province is a major livestock-raising province and has huge demand for silage corn. As corn prices fall and the 'grain-to-feed' transition advances, silage corn will be increasingly sought after by the market, and the returns will get better and better."

For ordinary corn, the way out lies in continuing to breed and promote high-yield, high-quality varieties, increasing the yield per unit area, and letting farmers make money growing corn. At the same time, breeding varieties that can be harvested directly as corn kernels can allow farmers to harvest corn the same way they harvest wheat, realize full mechanization of corn, further reduce labor, and lower corn production costs. The fundamental way out is still to speed up land transfer and promote large-scale planting. Only in this way can corn production costs be greatly reduced, market competitiveness be enhanced, and farmers be able to make money growing corn amid fierce market competition, thereby both meeting market demand and ensuring national food security.