IOWA CITY, Iowa – One year after last August’s devastating derecho in Iowa, farmers have been managing volunteer corn at varying degrees, while repairs to damaged grain storage facilities are expected to be completed by this fall, according to industry experts.

“It depends on the level of damage in the field,” said Kristina TeBockhorst, Iowa State University (ISU) field agricultural engineer in Iowa City. “There are definitely some bad fields out there this year. But from those that I have talked to with harvestable fields, if they made enough adjustments to their combine headers – many adding reels or cones – they didn’t have much volunteer corn to manage.”

Rebecca Vittetoe, ISU field agronomist in Washington, said the amount of volunteer corn also depends on how aggressive farmers were in managing it.

“Research investigations of corn seed viability of derecho-impacted corn indicated that if the corn plant had not yet reached maturity, the viability of the seed was significantly lower than in mature plants, so the maturity of the corn when the plant died last year will make a big difference in the amount of volunteer corn in a field this year,” she said.

Virgil Schmitt, ISU field agronomist in Muscatine, said he had not run into as many problems as he had anticipated with volunteer corn. “Managing volunteer corn in soybeans is fairly easy, and about 70 percent of corn acres in any one year will be followed by soybeans in the next year,” he said.

“In the 30 percent of 2021 corn acres that were preceded by corn in 2020, most farmers were able to plant corn with different herbicide traits, compared to the herbicide traits in the 2020 corn, which allowed volunteer corn management to occur,” he added. “For the most part, volunteer corn management has gone well. Most of the affected acres went to soybeans, which made it much easier to control the volunteer corn.”

Regarding the rebuilding of grain storage, Mark Licht, ISU assistant professor of agronomy, and extension cropping systems specialist, said, “It appears to me that cooperatives have rebuild – or in process of rebuilding – grain storage. On-farm grain storage has been a slower process.”

TeBockhorst said, “From the builders and farmers that I have spoken with, a lot of the damaged, on-farm grain storage systems are on track to be replaced by this upcoming harvest, though millwrights are still hard at work to hit that goal.

“I think they’ve had pretty good weather to get the repairs completed, but I cannot speak to how difficult it has been to get replacement parts or to keep or get enough workers hired on,” she said.

“I have been hearing that in the heaviest-hit area near Cedar Rapids along Highway 30 and north, well over half of the repairs were complete replacements of the grain systems,” she added. “Minor repairs were also common, such as just replacing a few bin sheets, or the bin roof.”

Mary Harrington, Landus Cooperative communications and marketing lead in Ames, said, “Fortunately, Landus did not incur significant grain storage loss in the derecho storm last August. From our view, most of the commercial and large farm storage sites affected have been able to reconstruct, if orders were placed early with suppliers.”

Conversely, she added, steel prices have increased significantly, and combined with other supply chain challenges, are posing problems for some projects to be completed on time: “Those who delayed decisions to rebuild or not likely encountered a lack of capacity to execute.”

Mike Moellenbeck, River Valley Cooperative vice president, grain business unit, in Davenport, said grain storage is coming back, and estimated two-thirds of the farm space has been re-built in the company’s trade area.

“Some producers are 100 percent back, while others have not seen any activity yet,” he said.

Dave Holm, Iowa Institute for Cooperatives executive director, concurred with Moellenbeck, saying the facilities that were severely damaged or destroyed should all be replaced by this fall.

“We are still waiting for some components for these new facilities – particularly some of the electronic pieces,” he said. “Some of the other facilities that were damaged but still functional will need to be repaired over the next two to three years since the priority was placed on replacing the ones that were destroyed. As with most things, the supply chain and availability of millwright crews has been an ongoing challenge.”