HUSA Aug 4 2026 - Seth Buxcel

So we're talking to Seth Buxtel on the irrigated corn. You pick a date and go or do the guys wait for a frost?   "In this period they have their corn maturity matured out ready to chop before frost. I won't say that we always get all of it covered before it freezes but the majority of it the guys are planting the beginning of May and schedule on a 90 to short 100 day corn. You'll get that chopped off in mid-September, late September and typically speaking our killing frost isn't until later September 20th or after. So most of that crop is has reached maturity for silage."   I'm 60 miles north of the border in southern Alberta. Got a big irrigated area up here and there's lots of corn. Grain, sweet and silage and it seems over the years that the guys doing silage corn have never been able to get it without a little bit of frost blight on the leaves and I've always thought man those leaves must must have some value. I wonder if the value goes down when if it gets burnt by a frost.   "So the leaves are such a small portion of your total tonnage and this is just hypothetically speaking but if they're pushing their maturity window right up against frost is what they're doing is they're pushing for tons. They're planting a longer day corn to try to get the tonnage out of it and get it right before it freezes. Does it hurt a little bit? Maybe a little bit but if you planted a longer day corn and you picked up an extra two ton to the acre is it two ton to the acre worth of damage? No. So it's a balance. It's a teeter-totter on where you put your weight and how far you're gonna push it."   That's it for today's Harvest USA report.