It is human nature to ask questions, but the agriculture community in particular is certainly not short on curiosity. Farmers have a long history of looking to the soil and sky to infer what impact they have on their crops and this is a tradition that continues today.
The mindset around harvest is often ‘get it in the bin’. This tends to accompany overlooked decisions such as combine speed of travel, direction of cutting, or recording data to analyze different trials performed throughout the growing season. Many think ‘I don’t want to slow down my operation in harvest since we never know when the next rain is coming’. This is all important information that is already being recorded in our combines, we just need to properly use this information to make informed decisions.
You may have heard a time or two this harvest that “the safest place for the crop is in the bin”. Although the bin is generally safer than the field, just because grain has been stored does not mean that it should be “out of sight and out of mind”.
Each year farmers devote countless time, effort and money towards their crops in hopes of producing big bushels and profits. After spending the fall and winter planning for the growing season ahead, the spring planting season kicks off by properly setting seeding equipment so the crop has the best possible chance to get established.
Producing a high yielding crop requires significant investment in the form of crop inputs. More often than not, investment in fertility will result in the highest ROI. As much as 30 – 50% of today’s crop production can come directly from nutrition.
Granular herbicides have slowly become less common over the years due to factors such as minimum tillage practices, the efficacy of new herbicide products on the market, and the ease of use of liquid herbicides. In spite of this, there are many reasons why growers should consider re- incorporating the use of pre-emergent granular herbicides into their herbicide rotations.