OCTOBER 14 AGRONOMY UPDATE

Your Local Weekly Ag Partners Agronomic Update.
The one-stop-shop to hearing everything you need to know this week about what is happening in your fields.

 

This week’s featured agronomists are:

 

Austin Schultz- Le Center
Erin Stackhouse – Owatonna
Todd Anderson- Goodhue

Ryan Ness- Lewiston

Scroll down to hear from your local agronomist.


West 
Belle Plaine – LeCenter – LeSueur

Austin Schultz

Fall is fast upon us! For many growers in our area, they are finishing up their soybean harvest and moving into corn. Many saw soybeans doing very well, with some areas averaging 70+ bushels to the acre. Focus on high management practices of fertility, seed treatments, and in-season plant health really showed up this year. We have found that soybeans respond to high fertility levels and not fertilizer applied. This may change as we conduct more experiments, but what that tells us is to apply fertilizer at high enough levels going into corn, that there will be enough left for the soybean crop to follow

 

Another avenue to set yourself up for high yield environments is to start with a premier seed treatment. Getting the seed out of the ground healthy and fast is one of the best ways to set yourself up for success. Here in Le Center, we treat a vast majority of the seed we sell through our KSI Seed Treater. Having our own treater onsite, allows us to treat the exact number of units you would need and include an inoculant.


Le Center’s seed treater – providing quality applications of fungicide, insecticides, nematicides, and inoculant.

While combining corn, it is a great time to look at the health of your varieties and consider the yield implications of different applications made to the corn. When it comes to choosing varieties for next year, make sure to make decisions early enough to ensure that you will get the seed size and hybrid you want. For example, this year we have seen very good responses to fungicide and top-dressed nitrogen. With a long growing season like we had, additional nitrogen helped significantly in adding extra bushels, and a fungicide was largely beneficial in protecting those extra bushels. I have always considered fall an excellent time to look at the different treatments done throughout the season to help you make decisions on your management practices for next year. If you are part of our AYS program, you already know how we pick apart every different treatment done throughout the year and if not, be sure to ask your agronomist about it.

We wish you all a safe and happy harvest!

Ag Partners Agronomists had a friendly competition last week to find the largest ear.  Contest winner was David Walechka from Le Center with NK0821 that was 20 kernels around by 40 kernels long.  Congrats!


Central 
Wanamingo – Kenyon – Morristown – Owatonna

Erin Stackhouse

Was your Planter Set Correctly?

I know you are probably wondering why I am talking about a planter in October. Harvest is basically the report card for the past growing season- a time to make notes on things to change for next year, what worked, what didn’t.  It is incredibly easy to have your row shutoffs turn on/turn off times incorrect.  At the time of planting it may not seem like a huge deal, but when it comes to doing the math it can turn into a big cost.  Below is an example from the current crop season. The shutoffs coming into the headlands were correct. Leaving the headlands was a different story.

The planter is 40 feet wide and the gap was 20 feet long.
This grower had 800 acres of corn.

40 f t × 20 ft=800 feet
800÷43,560=.018365 ac
33 × .018365= .6 acres
(33 passes in 80 acres)On 800 acres of corn it would be 6 acres total

Cost of Production
$630 × .6= $378 on 80 ac
(minus $120 seed costs)
$3780 on 800 acres

Missed Revenue
200bu × .6= 120 bu
120bu × $3.50 = $420
 $4200 on 800 acres

As you can see this adds up quickly, all because one setting was incorrect. It is very important in the spring that you take time to check your planter shutoffs. Digging seed for 15 minutes can pay for itself fast!

REMINDER!
As we finish up soybeans in our area and move into corn, remember to calibrate your combine for corn!   Good data in, Good data out!


South 
Lewiston

Ryan Ness

As some of you know, we emailed you a short survey on Monday, October 12th.  We are going to be sending a very short 3-4 question survey each Monday and follow up by sending the responses that following Friday.  All responses will be completely anonymous.  Our intention with the surveys is to get some high level information on trends and what’s happening real time throughout harvest and have a little fun in the process.  Thank you for your participation!

 


East  
Pine Island – Cannon Falls -Goodhue -Lake City

Todd Anderson Agronomist Goodhue

Todd Anderson

The 1st half of 2020 harvest has been fast and furious.  As of right now most guys have finished up an above average soybean harvest and have moved into a corn crop that looks strong as well.  With some of the weather bumps we experienced this growing season, now is a great time to reach out to your AYS specialist with any insights that you are seeing from the cab.  This includes whether you have to recalibrate because the monitor is off in a field, a field that had wind damage, or trial that you have on your farm.  Any insights that you have will help us get your data cleaned up and analyzed more efficiently, to help ensure we can get the results back in your hands quickly.