Corn Field.

A couple of weeks ago, May 15th and 16th to be exact, we had some cold weather come through at night. It got cold enough to cause some frost damage on the corn that was up.

And talk about an upset husband who used to be able to look at some nice green healthy plants, but now sees nothing but a brown mess of dead leaves. Thankfully in the case of our corn the frost came while the corn was only a few leaves tall; about three to four to be exact. This means the growing point on the corn is still below ground level, which means that the ground acted much like a coat for the corn plants.

It has only been about four days since the frost and already you can see the green coming back to the corn. Yea!

It is still too soon however to have a crop insurance adjuster out to look at the damage. As one of those adjusters I thought I’d give you a few points of interest when looking at frost damage.

Frost damage falls into the realms of hail damage we have to wait 7-10 days before we can come out to appraise any affected fields whether it be corn, soybeans, milo or wheat. The reason for this is we have to wait to see what is going to live and what is going to die. Just like it take the corn weeks to dry down in the fall it takes a few days for to true extent of the damage to become apparent on frost/freeze or hail damage.

Some things we look at when we are in the field are if the plants are starting to green back up, meaning they are still alive. We also look to see what size of an area is affected by the damage or if the damage is worse on one portion of the field. The frost we had affected the corn in the lower laying areas since cold sinks closer to the ground. The corn on the higher ground was not dinged at all.

Another thing an adjuster might do is to pull a plant out of the ground and cut it in two. By cutting a plant or two in half we can see the inner most parts of the plant to see if the middle of the plant is still alive (like in the picture). If the interior color or composition of the plant is questionable an adjuster will probably elect to wait longer to make a final appraisal on the field. This will give the plants more time to either come back or to die off. This will lead to a more accurate appraisal on the crop.

This is one week after the frost.

The one thing an adjuster cannot answer is, how will this hurt overall production? There are too many variables to consider, will the weather stay warm, will you get rains at the right time, will you get enough rain to make a difference, will it get to hot and stay too hot for the rest of the year? These questions are some of the unknowns of farming an adjuster just cannot answer.

These are some of the unknowns that all farmers deal with on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis.

I help this explains some things the adjuster is looking at when they inspect your crops.

Later,
Stephanie
The Moderately Involved Kansas Farm Wife