Thanks for sharing Kevin!

I have heard there are some experiments going on in Kansas with ultra low corn populations and trying to really maximize the corn’s flex. I would agree that if you are not changing in-row population then it makes more sense to stay on 30’s but cut overall ppa. In Illinois there have been many neighbors that have tried variations of skip row corn, but ultimately decided that managing the extra open space was not worth it.

Playing with low populations would be interesting because it might give you a better chance to interseed cover crops. It seems like with a full canopy it’s harder not to shade out certain species.

The other thought that comes to mind with low populations would be how much foliar feeding, or even strip tilling or other banded nutrition would be a good way of doing fertility. With less plants out there each would need to search farther to find broadcast nutrients, and in my mind you might loose some fertilizer efficiency compared to getting it as close to each plant as possible.

I’m assuming you are pretty far south to have corn that far along. What kind of hybrids or hybrid traits are you trying low pop corn with? I might need to play with some myself!