Growing Organic Grain Corn

(Image by Couleur from Pixabay)

Our farm is situated in Eastern Ontario along the St. Lawrence River, about 10 km from the Quebec border. My grandfather, who is still farming with us, bought the farm in 1971. Over the years he grew the farm, along with my dad and my uncle and now my two older brothers and myself. 

We are primarily a dairy farm, milking around 330 cows a day. We crop around 1,000 acres, using about 60% of it for feed. Over the last 5 years we transitioned our extra cash crop acres to organic. My role on the farm is working with the nutritionist to formulate rations, working in the barn, doing the organic certifying paperwork and managing the organic acres.  

We grow alfalfa and grass for haylage, corn for silage and grain corn for the cows. We also grow corn and soybeans to sell off the farm.  

Our farm is where we live and raise our families, so whether on our organic or conventional land, we like to use best management practices for manure application, fertilizing, weed control, etc. For example, we recently purchased a manure injector to use with our dragline so as to reduce nitrogen volatilization from manure and increase its fertilizing value.

(Image: Michael Oeggerli’s field)

I became interested in on-farm research when talking with Rob Wallbridge about variety selection. I had found little research on grain corn varieties suitable for growing organically in  our region. When I mentioned that I would be willing to participate in a variety trial, he suggested I contact the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO). 

With the help of EFAO, in 2021 we planted a trial of 8 different varieties of grain corn. In the variety trial we paid special attention to early season vigor, plant standability, yield, bushel weight and harvest moisture. We ended up having a fantastic growing season, so all the plants got off to a great start and stood well in the fall. We measured yield, bushel weight and moisture at harvest, and used these traits to select our winning varieties. 

(Image: harvesting variety trials)

This was an unreplicated variety trial, but it gave me the basis for selecting varieties for further testing. The 8 varieties were from four different seed companies. Variety yields varied from 204 to 254 bushels/acre.  The three highest yielding varieties were: 

VARIETY    YIELD (TONS/ ACRE)    YIELD (BU/ACRE) 

9608            6.2      241 

9998            6.4     252 

0157            6.5     254  

I found the first two the most interesting varieties to continue planting. While 0157 gave the highest yield, it has high heat unit requirements and high harvest moisture and may not reach maturity in some years in our region.  

Grain corn is something we planned to grow organically right from the start. We had experience growing corn for our cows. Also, we have friends in Quebec that grow organic grain corn, and they were able to give us advice and tips. Having manure from the dairy cows to fertilize it with made it seem like a logical choice. The high demand for organic grain corn also made it seem like it would be a profitable crop to grow.

(Image: Applying liquid manure prior to planting corn)

The main difference for us in growing organic corn was weed control. Typically, we hire a custom operator to spray one pass of a pre-emerge herbicide on our conventional corn after we plant. If as the season progresses, we saw that we had a weed problem, we would call him back to spray a second time. 

This is not possible with organic production, of course, so we invested in a tine weeder, an interrow cultivator and a moldboard plough. For fertility we planted the corn following alfalfa in our rotation and applied manure in the spring before planting. These two nutrient sources combined to give the corn crop enough fertility for the season. Our typical rotation is corn followed by soybeans and a legume hay. 

(Image: cultivating organic corn for weed control)

So far, growing corn organically has gone very well. We are presently in our fourth organic corn growing season. With three favourable growing seasons behind us, yield has been surprisingly good, averaging close to 5 tons of grain to the acre compared with 5.5 tons for our conventional corn. We are waiting to see that this year’s results will be. 

 It continues to take a bit of networking to find buyers for organic grain products and fluctuations in prices represent a challenge. Organic corn prices are approximately 30% lower today than they were in 2023. Growing soybeans to meet food grade standards can also represent a challenge. 

Despite these challenges, we plan to continue growing organic grain. Over time we have added to our organic area so that now 450 of our 1,000 crop acres are certified. Such a large area may prove to be a challenge for weed control going forward. We would like to reduce ploughing the organic land, so I am actively looking at alternatives.

(Image: Michael Oeggerli pouring seed to the planter)

I don’t feel comfortable giving other people suggestions for growing organic grain corn because I don’t have enough experience yet. I am still in an active learning stage. But I do encourage other grain farmers to consider organic. 

Michael Oeggerli  

Heidi Farms Inc. 

heidifarmsinc@gmail.com