Q: How do farmers know when to harvest corn?
A: There are a few different factors to figure when looking at when to harvest corn – those include maturity, weather and plant health, but most important is moisture content.
As a general rule of thumb, farmers like to harvest corn between 15-25 percent moisture content. The variation depends on what they are doing with the corn and if they have a drying and storing facility on their farm.
Delivering directly to the grain elevator
Grain elevators prefer corn at 15 percent moisture content (which is optimal for storing corn without spoilage) – any higher and they will dock the price per bushel because the elevator will need to dry the corn to store it in their facility.
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