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Corn is drier-than-usual in SEMO

Southeast Missouri farmer Clint Stephens is harvesting a drier-than-usual corn crop.

“We picked some that were 13 to 15% and the wettest corn we’ve picked is 17.5% moisture.”

Stephens is from Stoddard County and says the corn usually goes through the dryer before heading to the elevator, but that’s not the case this year due to the combination of early planting, low humidity and high heat.

“We’ve had a great year for corn down here,” he says. “And with the dry corn, we’ll reduce propane costs. The price of corn isn’t very stellar.”

But he says it’s a good crop and the farm did some pre-harvest marketing of the new crop.

“What we got wasn’t a great price, but we thought we could live with it and we didn’t have room for storage so we took it on to the elevator,” he says. “We store about two-thirds of the corn we grow.”

Stephens is halfway through corn harvest and says he anticipates wrapping up with corn by mid-September and then, rice harvest begins.