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Minnesota farmer experimenting with wide-row corn

A farmer in southwest Minnesota is experimenting with wide-row corn.

Mark Enninga of Fulda says his project, funded in part by an Innovation Grant from the Minnesota Corn Growers, began last year.

“Within our system we have a standard row spacing of 22 inches, and to utilize wide-row concepts we looked at using 44 inches.”

He compared the two on approximately 30 acres using six replicated strips.

Enninga aerial seeded a cover crop into both the standard and wide-row corn to help control weeds, provide forage for his dairy cattle, and improve soil health.  But he says two inches of heavy rain came right after.

“There’s quite a bit of variability in the cover crop stand because the cover crop seed, from everything I could tell, actually washed down the rows in certain places. So I had a nice stand of cover crops in some rows and other rows it was very bare.”

He found wide-row corn inferior to standard-width corn by 26 bushels per-acre.

“What we had heard was people were seeing around a five to ten percent yield decrease with using wide-row corn, and then picking up the balance of the benefits of wide-row corn through the use of the cover crops.”

This year Enninga hopes to better understand plant-to-plant variability, but says he will be studying wide-row corn on a much smaller basis.

Enninga’s comments were made during a recent Minnesota Corn Growers Association podcast.

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