[Crops 101] How To Sow & Harvest Corn / Maize

Welcome to your next "Crops 101" lesson of the Farming Simulator Academy! This time, we’re focusing on corn: You can harvest it as grain or chop it into chaff. We show you how in this tutorial.

What Is Special About Corn?

• Corn is commonly used in American English, while maize is often used in British English.
• You can feed corn to your pigs.
• Instead of harvesting corn as grain, you can chop it into chaff and produce silage.
• Silage is used as an ingredient for TMR which is fed to cows.
• For chaff, harvest corn between August and September.
• For grain corn, harvest between October and November.

What You Need For Corn

Already have everything you need? Then you can move straight to the field. Otherwise, prepare the following equipment:

• Tractor: Used to operate the tools needed for field preparation, planting, and crop care.
• Cultivator: Prepares the field before planting.
• Planter: Plants corn and needs to be filled with seeds.
• Fertilizer spreader: Applies fertilizer and, depending on the model, lime.
• Hoe: Removes weeds and prevents yield penalty.
• Harvester with a corn header: Harvests corn as grain. For chaff use a forage harvester.
• Trailer: Transports your harvested corn or chaff.

Let's Get To Work!

If seasonal growth is enabled, plant corn in April or May. Depending on what you want to produce, you can later harvest it as grain or chop it into chaff.

Step 1: Applying lime

Check the field information to see whether lime is required. If so, fill a compatible fertilizer spreader with lime and cover the entire field.

Step 2: Cultivating the field

Prepare the soil with a cultivator. Before you start, check the field information to see whether plowing is required instead. In that case, use a plow and work the entire field.

Need more details? Take a look at plowing and cultivating.

Step 3: Planting corn

Fill your planter with seeds, select corn, and start planting. Lower and activate the planter, then cover the entire field.

Not sure how planting works? Here's our planting guide.

Step 4: Fertilizing

Fertilize the field to improve your yield. You can fertilize twice during one crop cycle, but there needs to be another growth stage between both applications.

Tip! With a manure or slurry spreader, you can activate the double application rate to reach full fertilization with one application.

Find out more about fertilizing.

Step 5: Removing weeds

Weeds may appear while your corn is growing. Remove them as early as possible with a weeder. Once they become larger, you need a hoe or herbicide instead.

Here's how to deal with weeds.

Step 6: Harvesting corn

Now it depends on what you want to produce. For grain corn, wait until the crop is ready between October and November and use a combine harvester with a corn header. If you want chaff instead, harvest earlier between August and September with a forage harvester and forage header.

Step 7: Selling and using corn

If you harvested grain corn, load it into a trailer. You can sell it, feed it to your pigs, or use it to produce cereal. If you produced chaff instead, transport it to a bunker silo and ferment it into silage.

Processing Corn: Products

You can use corn to produce cereal. If you harvest the crop as chaff instead, you can ferment it into silage.

Well Done!

Congratulations! You now know the basics of growing corn in Farming Simulator. When you're ready, continue with the next Farming Simulator Academy lesson!