Corn Services in Madera, CA

Corn is one of the largest field crops in the western states, but it is grown mainly as a feed crop and the system changes with the region. In California and the Pacific Northwest, most corn is silage for the region's large dairy herds, cut at high moisture and chopped whole plant into feed. On the Texas High Plains and across irrigated basins, corn is grown for grain, much of it feeding the cattle feedlots that anchor the local economy. Either way it is an irrigation-heavy, machine-driven crop that runs on a tight schedule from planting to harvest.

The season opens with land work and precision planting into warm soil, usually April into May, followed by a heavy fertility program. Corn is a nitrogen-hungry crop, and near the dairies that fertility often comes from manure and effluent applied to the ground, alongside side-dress nitrogen and fertigation through the irrigation system. Through the summer growers irrigate by pivot, drip, or furrow and protect the crop against weeds, corn rootworm, spider mites, and disease, frequently by air.

Harvest is where silage and grain diverge. Silage is chopped by self-propelled forage harvesters and hauled straight to the bunker or pile to be packed and fermented, so chopping and trucking have to move together. Grain corn is combined with a corn head, run out of the field by grain carts so the combine never stops, then hauled and often dried down to safe storage moisture. Agnomy connects growers with vetted local operators for every stage, from planting and spraying through chopping, combining, carting, drying, and hauling, with scheduling, quotes, and payments handled in one place.