A late freeze, hail, high winds and a dry May and June all potentially lower yield and offset record high prices at the grain elevator.
If that weren’t enough, and with the combines now rolling, corn farmers face another threat.
The culprit is a fungus with a tongue-twister name - aflatoxin. It thrives in hot conditions such as the unusually hot weather that scorched Bell County this May and June.
Down in Holland - a town that has celebrated its corn culture with a festival for 34 years - Kenneth Guthrie runs a grain elevator that weighs, stores and ships corn. A burly man with a busy moustache, wearing Wranglers and a plaid short-sleeve shirt, Guthrie explained what causes aflatoxin.
“It’s a stress-related fungus. When that corn gets in a stressful period, that’s when it hits it,” Guthrie said.
Ironically, recent rain has only made aflatoxin worse; adding moisture to already stressed corn plants increases conditions for the fungus to thrive.
“Up until we got these little old showers, aflatoxin was all right,” Guthrie said. “Now it’s getting over 200, and that’s bad news.”
Guthrie says it’s bad news because aflatoxin is measured on a sliding scale from zero to 300. The higher the number, Guthrie said, the “less that corn’s worth. If it gets over 300, we can’t buy it.”
That’s exactly what happened to Scott Averhoff 10 years ago. He plowed under 900 acres of corn because of high aflatoxin levels.
Averhoff used that experience to become an aflatoxin expert. Today, he is chairman of the board at the Texas Corn Producers Board.
Corn with high levels of aflatoxin can be mixed with low-level corn and still be used in a variety of animal feed products, Averhoff said. Still, the unlucky farmer with high aflatoxin levels gets a lower price for his corn.
Averhoff said, like the weather, aflatoxin could be fickle.
“The only consistent thing about aflatoxin, is it’s inconsistent,” Averhoff said. “It has very erratic distribution.”
Friday afternoon, Russell Bartek was hustling to keep up with demand for aflatoxin tests at Granger Farm Products, about 15 miles south of Holland. He said there is a dramatic difference between last year and this year’s crop.
“The biggest reason for the spike in numbers is the drought,” Bartek said. “Drought puts a helluva stress on corn and anytime you stress a grain it opens the door for infections.”
Bartek said some farmers have already shredded (destroyed) their crops this year because of high aflatoxin levels.
Until the 1960s, aflatoxin was not a major concern in agriculture. But when the death of more than 100,000 turkey poults was traced to this fungus, scientists took a close look at potential health problems when contaminated feed or food is consumed.
Back in Holland, with an 18-wheeler rolling on the truck scale to weigh his load of corn, Guthrie reflected on what might have been.
“If we didn’t have to mess with this aflatoxin, it would be a charm,” Guthrie said. “If we’d of gotten that rain the last part of May, we’d of made a bumper crop.”
Telegram photographer Scott Gaulin contributed to this story
