By Tom Nicolette
Senior Network Producer

Central Texas corn yields and quality are down. Farmers completed harvesting a crop hit hard by drought and hot, summer temperatures.

“The yields were definitely below normal. I’d say yields were probably 30% less than normal,” said corn farmer Aaron Martinka. “We had low bushel weight, low test weight corn—very small kernels caused by the dryness and the heat we had.”

Martinka, who farms primarily in Milam County but also grow crops in Bell and Williamson counties, said he averaged about 60 bushels an acre of corn. That’s about a third of what he made per acre in 2021.

“Our crop was progressing rather impressively with minimal rainfall we had up until June. When June hit, the moisture really ran out. The heat really took a lot of our yield, more so than I expected,” he said in an interview with Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network. “I theorize that just the heat alone took probably 20% of the yield. It just dehydrated the corn. It just shrunk so much more than I thought it was capable of shrinking.”

Now that the corn harvest is completed in the Central Texas region, many are baling corn stalks for cattle feed.

“You can drive on the roads and just constantly pass trucks pulling trailers full of corn stalk bales, because at this point, that’s the only thing left,” he said.

As a farmer, Martinka has to weigh the option of baling those corn stalks for cattle feed or leaving them on the land to provide nutrients for the soil.

“But the cows have to eat,” he said.

Corn harvest across the state is about 40% complete, according to the latest Crop Progress and Condition report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.