Rootworm traps verify low insect pressure

TOULON, Ill. — Insect pressure in Cliff Lane’s fields has been lower this year compared to previous years.

Lane placed corn rootworm traps in three of his fields starting on July 7.

“This week will be the last week and the counts have been extremely low. I caught four and they were all northern corn rootworm beetles,” said Lane, who is married to Tammy and farms in Stark County in north-central Illinois.

“This is what I anticipated, but I still like to check,” he said. “We don’t see a lot of issues with our corn-soybean rotation.”

The freezing last winter, Lane said, may have contributed to the low numbers of insects.

“There is also discussion that we had saturated soils when the rootworms were hatching, so maybe that drowned some of them,” he said.

However, Lane scouted a field with a farmer that is growing conventional corn and found European corn borer damage.

“We could see the holes in the top of the leaves and we noticed a hole right below the ear,” he said. “There was about a 30% European corn borer infestation, so that is a field they do not want to wait to harvest when it is ready.”

Disease pressure has been surprising, Lane said.

“When it was fungicide application time, our corn was really clean, especially compared to a year ago,” he said. “You could find a little bit of gray leaf spot, some northern corn leaf blight and people were finding tar spot specs here and there.”

Tar spot will show up more during the fall, since it mostly stops when it gets hot.

“But since we’ve had tar spot in the area, we’re going to deal with it every year,” Lane said.

“Southern rust did come in a little bit, so I think the guys who were proactive with fungicides are glad they were,” he said. “Where they did not apply fungicides, it came in pretty quick and some guys did a later application and others elected not to.”

Lane did one fungicide application on his fields since they were clean.

“I tried to push my timing back to full brown silk,” he said. “The challenge is if you have rust and tar spot sets in later, the two together can really create issues.”

Plants will die and dry early.

“That will take some of your top end yield off,” Lane said. “And stalk quality will be a bigger issue because the diseases rob out of the plant, to finish filling the ear.”

In soybeans, Lane has seen a little white mold.

“With the wet weather and cool spring, that is not surprising and sudden death is starting to show up,” the farmer said.

“I think there is a good opportunity with bean yields,” he said. “We should have plenty of moisture to get the pods filled, so there should not be an issue as long as more disease doesn’t come in and create issues.”

Lane has almost all his grain hauled out of his storage from the 2025 growing season.

“I have one bin to run the sweep to clean out,” the farmer said.

“Unfortunately, last week everybody in our neighborhood had a good reminder of grain bin safety when a neighbor got his foot caught in a sweep,” he said. “The blessing is that he is still with us, so grain bin safety is important because accidents happen so fast.”

Now Lane is starting to prepare his equipment for harvest.

“Generally, we start with some of the early corn and it will probably be the end of September before we get going,” he said. “We will run two to seven days on corn and then try to get all the beans done and finish up the corn.”

After corn harvest, dry fertilizer blended with rye for a cover crop will be spread in one pass on all the cornstalks.

“Depending on the weather and field conditions, I will run a vertical tillage over it to help it get incorporated, or if we have heavy dews or a couple of sprinkles, it will come up and I don’t mess with it,” Lane said.

For about the last eight years, he has planted a cover crop on all the fields with cornstalks that will be planted to soybeans the following year.

“I am in a program through NRCS that provides a reimbursement for the cover crop seeds, and because I am already going across the fields with fertilizer, there is no additional charge,” he said of the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“The only additional cost for me is the termination in the spring since I have to run a higher rate of burn down to control the rye,” Lane said.

“In the spring, I have fields where I terminate the rye ahead and plant into the dry matter, or I have fields that I plant into green,” he said. “I have not had challenges with either one.”

Recently, Cornelius Seed held its kickoff meeting where awards were presented for last year and the sales team learned about the sales programs and products that will be available for the 2027 growing season.

“We have over 100 salespeople for Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin and we try to make the meeting educational,” said Lane, who is a regional sales manager for the company that was established in 1935.

“Our seed prices overall are pretty much flat for next year,” he said. “The organic and conventional is the largest growing portion of our portfolio and we have added the Durastak trait this year for corn rootworm control.”

For soybean varieties, the company did some trails with Victrato which focuses on sudden death syndrome and also provides nematode control.

“It will do a great job on red crown rot, which is starting to be a bigger issue,” Lane said. “It can be very destructive if it comes to fruition in an area.”

“We promote PivotBio which is a good alternative to replace 30 to 40 units of synthetic nitrogen,” he said. “We also work with Meristem planter box products that include micronutrients and some biologicals that help with disease and quicker emergence.”