Herman Warsaw

Herman Warsaw was one of the first farmers to break 300 bushels of corn per acre 35 years ago.  He truly was a pioneer in growing high yield corn.  I wandered over to his farm one summer when I was a young man and his corn was even better than the corn dad and I had raised beside the cattle loafing shed.

Joel Gruver at Western Illinois University just converted those http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn-LDU1RJ0s ols VHS tapes so now we can all see his great advice and wisdom.  Even if it is 40 years old, many of his tips work today like soil fertility and soil tilth for example.

Herman had great soils, better than our older Illinoian Glacial Till Soils on his Wisconsin Till Plain.  Saybrook Silt Loam was named after his town, Saybrook, Illinois.  It is just north and west of Champaign, Illinois and I still love to stick my hands in that soil.  I got to do that once more on my trip home from Farm to Plate Conference in Riverside, Iowa.  Everyone seemed to get near his yield level in that area in the last decade but their yields have been going downhill the last five or six years.  There are many reasons for that we won't discuss here today.

I remember the 1066 IHC tractor in the videos but I don't remember the big Massey V8.  Maybe he didn't have it yet when I was there, I don't know.  In fact I thought he had a 1206 IHC so maybe I was there a few years earlier.

Herman's name has been brought up many times on Crop Talk since its inception but it has come up again as University researchers can't produce the yields Herman did 40 years ago.  Everyone wants to know why?  Again there are many reasons but one noticeable difference is GMO corn had not been invented when Herman farmed.  I don't know if that is the reason for the yield differences or not but it sure makes me think. 

Here is another link where you can read more about Herman.  https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=herman+warsaw+corn&oq=herman+warsaw+&gs_l=hp.1.1.0l2j0i10i30j0i30.0.0.1.38.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.ukrXbvlO46k&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41248874,d.b2U&fp=43632ea51b4889a4&biw=1896&bih=894

Since I am having problems imbedding the link in my text I will leave it here until I can fix this later.  I wanted you to catch up on the talk of high yield corn going around.

I am no Herman Warsaw but I can help improve corn yields.  I think we all can but not by doing what we have done in previous years.

Ed