Archive Article: 2001/05/19
Web Trawl
If you are thinking of growing maize, where better than the US for some more detailed advice. Elizabeth Ingle does the trawling
A SEARCH for maize or corn throws up a hoard of material on maize research, biotechnology and growing maize in tropical climes. The US has the most sites and you will find a plethora of state sites in the Corn Belt. Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota account for over 50% of the corn grown in the US. Other major growing states are Indiana, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, Ohio and Kentucky.
Many of the state-based grower sites feature market and lobbying information rather than agronomy though you will find some academic papers from the universities. I particularly liked the Maize Page to be found at www.maize.agron.iastate.edu/
The national sites – www.acga.org (American Corn Growers Association) and www.ncga.com (National Corn Growers Association) are worth a look but again the thing that impresses is the strength of lobbying power and the very close industry links. Not something we are familiar with on UK sites or in UK agriculture.
The Corn Growers Guidebook, www.kingcorn.org says it is devoted to more profitable corn management systems. The Guidebook has been available on the web since 1994 and is a thoroughly comprehensive site with heaps of links to research material – beware some reports are hefty tomes and downloading in pdf format is time consuming. From there I found my way to www.farmland.com website of the largest farmer-owned co-operative in North America. It has some useful technical information on diseases – crop tips- try www.farmland.com/ agoperat/croptips/stalkrot.html as an example.
The Ontario Corn Growers Association website – www.corninfo.com – is described as the place for corn growers to find links to sources of information about managing, growing, harvesting, storing and marketing maize. It has a good clear click through menu style and covers everything from soils and fertiliser to handling and storing frost damaged grain. Some of the material is not going to be strictly relevant for UK growers but there is a lot there that is transferable or gives food for thought. For example I found an interesting article on fine tuning nitrogen rates on www.ontariocorn.org/magazine.html
Ontarios corn farmers have another new website www.gocorn.net. Its focus is on emerging technologies and on updating corn growers on the latest results from corn agronomy research.
Of the commercial sites I prefer Pioneer – www.pioneer.com for the US site and the UK site www.phibred.co.uk/. Both are easy to navigate and do have a wealth of agronomic material which is easy to access. Some of the others are very much tuned to biotechnology and the selection of variety depending on location so not very useful for UK growers looking at US-based websites.
When researching this piece I did find myself being taken down some blind alleys by the library link sites so I must mention the maize maze sites – www.americanmaze.com and www.cornfieldmaze.com are quite amazing. Im sure we can expect to see more mazes here and at least they are a hedge on profits in these trying times – unlike corn circles!
Any comments or sites worth a look contact me on lizingle@waitrose.com