What's New in Planter Technologies?

thank you hello everyone welcome to science for successes webinar on planter Technologies my name is Jenny carleo I'm an area specialized agent at NC State and I also am the Project Director under Dr Rachel van who is our soybean extension specialist so science for success is a team of soybean extension Specialists from across the country and we are funded by the United soybean board so we use checkoff dollars to conduct our programming and um since we are a National Organization we'd like to know where you are all from too so we're going to put up a poll and we would love to know which state you're from you can type out the whole name of the state and then I will summarize that information and show it to everyone later on in the presentation so just about science for success as you're filling out that poll our project goal is really to deliver soybean best management practices to our soybean producers in America and we do that through a couple of different ways first of all we summarize our state-funded research so a lot of farmers have similar questions from all across the country and we get together and we make sure that we come up with practical information to solve your questions and um then we also need to conduct research experiments and what we do is um we collaborate on different protocols typically we'll do one or two a year that are broad reaching and that impact a lot of Growers and of course an example would be this webinar about how we extend our research to the public so as extension professionals that's really our mission here and that's what we do at science for Success it's truly your soybean check off dollars at work so I'm going to close this poll now and I'm going to go into introducing our speakers um so our topic today is what's new in planter Technologies and our main speaker is Dr Michael Plumley he's from Clemson University which is the land grant University in South Carolina and he's the lead author on the publication that we'll be sharing with you later today also we have for the Q a session Dr Chad Lee he's at the University of Kentucky Dr John Klein John at South Dakota State University Mike Mulvaney at Mississippi State and Dr Emma macham at University of Florida so with that Michael I will pass it off on to you okay thank you for that introduction Jenny um again like Jenny mentioned today's webinar I think kind of the the overarching goal of this is to highlight some of the technological advances that we've got in row crop Planters um specific the soybean but you know obviously they'll be applied to many other different row crops that we're growing in in rotation but really uh give you all kind of like a bird's eye view of what's out there where we see some benefit um with these technology and Technologies and incorporating them into your production system so you know kind of just starting off um obviously if you if you kind of keep up with the industry and where we're at um you know in row crop production and especially with technology and Equipment uh it's no secret that our our planners have advanced drastically over the last 10 to 15 years um for example the row unit on the on the left of the screen is what I would consider just a traditional row unit that you would get on a you know a baseline planner um not to say that it's bad I think there's is a lot of value in having that but as compared to the road unit on the right we we can pretty much pick apart the the planter nowadays and really manipulate and do a very good job at our placement of all of our different products and make sure that within the planner pass we're doing the best job that we possibly can so um you know today's talk is going to kind of highlight some of the major aspects of the plantar row unit um that we put into a publication like Jenny mentioned and we'll share that link a little bit later but really I think we kind of broke it down into five different areas that we wanted to basically highlight or discuss and that's uh you know trash cleaners the seed delivery system um closing Wheels uh downforce and then anything we can put in Furrow so with that being said is we kind of go through the The Talk today be thinking of some good questions uh that you can ask our panel of of other presenters on this talk today of things you know you might be thinking about on your operation or technology questions that you may have as we move forward again I think that's kind of what the idea of this presentation is in my realm is to bring ideas to you that you can then further uh ask some more questions on so starting with seed delivery um you know again just the process of taking the seed putting it into the planter and getting it into the ground where it needs to be we've had significant advances in new technologies in this area of the planter over the last several years um you know with things like uh seed singulation we've got improved metering systems where uh you know we're running the vacuum on the planter up much higher pulling more seed to the plate and then cleaning that plate off to ensure that we've got good singulation um and we're able to also you know do a much better job at varying speeds than we've traditionally been able to do uh with seed metering obviously high speed planting is becoming a new Hot Topic with uh different production systems across the the US uh we're able to plant it a traditional much higher speeds than traditionally uh that we planted at in order to cover more acreage more ground in a narrower winter window of time but being able to do that is still maintain the accuracy of the meter I think is really important so there are technologies that we've seen come to Market recently that have been able to do that and then obviously variable rate seating so that's something that I think there's a lot of interest in especially with high input prices over the last couple of years where can we cut back can we save on seed can we Implement variable rate seeding to do that but I think moving forward we still have quite a few questions um in terms of you know how do we develop a prescription does variable rate seating pay on my farm what crops does it pay in and that sort of thing so kind of the question I have with this or something to kind of lead into the next slide is you know can we Max maximize our accuracy while maximizing our productivity we don't want to you know maybe increase our planar speed but then have some penalty with that and I think that's where we start to see some separation in these Technologies uh moving forward so you know looking at the meter obviously uh its job is to pull seed and drop it down uh the seed tube into the ground into the front of the planter Road it's making uh singulation is something that's really important especially in corn where we're trying to get you know each individual seed placed in the ground at a nice uniform distance apart within the row in reality we really don't see a lot of yield impact in soybean with good singulation like we do in corn I guess the caveat to that would be if we're planting really late with soybean um you know where we may not have as many days left or time to accumulate sunlight and heat to progress the crop throughout through Harvest you know if we're planting late obviously we want to make sure that the plants are more spaced so they can intercept light do much do much better job um and that kind of leads into the double cropping scenario too I know in South Carolina we're playing around with this idea of double cropping soybean behind corn um you know our planting window is very very narrow but we also have a very condensed growing season at that point so I think we'll probably see a little bit more of a benefit and some simulation at that time also where we have sub-optimal seating rate so you know I think 70 to 80 thousands plants uh or 70 to 80 000 plants emerge per acre is really kind of that threshold in in many areas across the the U.S where you know maybe we call for a replant if you tie it into last last week's webinar we kind of addressed some of those things but um you know if we have sub-optimal rates I think again singulation and soybean is going to be much more critical so you know we have the ability now with some of these meters to plant 99 singulation um you know that's a great thing I think it's good uh are we going to see a big return on investment with that sort of simulation in soybean probably not again like uh like our speaker last week uh Dr Connolly mentioned you know soybeans are very plastic they can they can compensate very well similarities similar to some of the other crops so we grow like cotton and peanut um so again you know we're not seeing a huge benefit in having soybean singulated but again if it's if you're using the planter in another crop such as corn um you know in rotation with something that matters it's definitely not going to hurt you so again kind of taking a step further we've talked about the meter but you know really the delivery system from the meter to the seed Furrow high speed planting um there's been several different advances for some of the equipment manufacturers uh really over probably like the last five years in this realm um where they're coming out with these brush type or belt type seed tubes or called speed tubes uh you can see a picture of that here on this slide where really we're able to kind of controllably force the seed down to the furrow and place it in the furrow uh doing a very good job where we're kind of minimizing some of the roll and bounce of the seed at these high speeds ensuring that we're doing the best process as we possibly can in terms of you know how we're putting that seed into the furrow um what we would consider you know high speed planting um I would kind of say in this 7 to 12 mile per hour range there are people planting you know up to those speeds and some of these larger fields in the midwest or out in the in the Mid-South in the Delta um you know but in reality you know this may not fit with everybody's production system I know for example uh here in South Carolina we do a lot of strip tilling with the planter attached to the strip till rig in tandem our field size is small irregular shaped you know I don't think we could physically plant uh at some of these speeds but at the same time out in Mid-South where planting windows are narrow maybe equipment's limited you know if we could take a six row planter and cover the same number of Acres it's a 12 row by doubling the speed you know there's probably some value in that um moving forward another technology or kind of I guess concept related to the metering and Planters in general is this variable rate seating um and really a basic definition of that is the application of a material which in this case would be Seed where rate is adjusted uh based on your location within a field or management Zone and um you know again variable rates kind of had a lot of interest over the last couple years seed costs continue to increase inputs so I think there's been a lot of emphasis or you know want need for knowledge on this topic but um really variable rate can be based or your application can be based map based you know you could sit down and and make a variable rate prescription on a map or it could be sensor based in some cases depending on the input with the addition of these hydraulic and electric planter drives on Planters um it really is just increased our ability to accurately plant variable rate prescriptions I know um you know in my program we've even planted a corn maze um in the past just where we've been able to basically plant a picture and get really good accuracy where we don't even have to go back and cut plants out where the walking allies are so we've made big strides and accuracy there being able to do some of these things and then be able to get the overall management of the seed down from maybe the whole planter aspect the individual Road control so some of the work that we've done specifically in my program or at least in the Southeast we've looked at variable rate soybean uh in terms of seeding um we you know kind of a snapshot of the research that we've done over the last five or six years on several different fields has shown where there was a benefit in the field to doing variable rate we can see maybe the potential profit of being six to twenty dollars dollars per acre depending on what year it was in the actual field it was in um you know I think a lot of that potential benefit that we're seeing there is probably from the seed savings standpoint not so much on the the yield increase standpoint um but I think it's also worthy to note that you know we have done variable rate trials in fields where the uniform rate that was applied actually outperformed the variable rate prescription that was developed so I think that uh you know we need to realize too that maybe not all fields are good candidates for variable rate um you know just because we have a variable rate prescription doesn't necessarily mean it's always going to be the most profitable or the the highest yielding treatment we could apply so you know some of the limitations that I see with seed delivery technology uh kind of I guess the white elephant in the room with soybean is just a return on investment um you know some you'll see kind of throughout the presentation some of the the technologies that we do highlight you know I think some of them were maybe geared towards or or develop more on the corn side of things so that planter is being used for corn and soybean you know there probably is an economic uh factor that can be justifiable in adding that to the planter but um you know as you'll see there may or may not be some sort of technology that we directly see a yield benefit in soybean just because they are they do have the ability to compensate so well in terms of variable rate you know the accurate data interpretation and the development of the profitable variable rate prescriptions I think is a big hurdle that we continue to to analyze and deal with every year uh some of the questions that we get often or you know what are the base layers that we need to use to develop the prescription should we be using soil EC should we use a Sergo data historical yield data you know I think we have several options there but maybe one works better for seeding rates and one might work better for you know variable rate potash or something like that so I think there's still quite a bit of work to do there and things to learn in terms of how do we really do the best job at making a prescription as we can um you know another good question is you know how variable must our Fields be to benefit from variable rate you know are we talking a five bushel swing in yield to Justified or maybe 50 bushel swing you know in some of these fields out in the Mid-South I don't know that's that's kind of a I guess the theory of this is that um you know everything is going to be very site-specific and then we also compete with other opportunity costs so you know it takes time to develop these prescriptions to collect the data to sit down at the end of the year and really go back and and mine and and see what we did and what worked so you know the time that we take or the money that we're allocating to pay somebody to do that you know there may be other opportunity costs that we could capture to make additional foreign profit uh there so again those are just some things to think about but again um you know is there a yield benefit the excellent stimulation of soybean you know it may depend on the the actual scenario or timing of planting and then you know again going back to you can you feasibly high-speed plant in your area like I mentioned earlier um you know there are limitations the field size equipment set up tillage Etc so kind of the the next big overarching topic that we have is is planner downforce and this is something that you know we've had you know on planners for quite some time in some aspect but I think there's been a lot of focus on uh newer Technologies where we have better control with with maintaining or uh reacting to different soil conditions with downforce so with planter downforce really the the way that I understand this technology and is the way that it should be implemented is this is basically developed to overcome soil resistance so that we're maintaining a uniform seating depth and I think in theory the idea behind it is that if we have uniform seating depth we have uniform emergence with the crops so when something like corn where we know that you know we might have some yield left on the table where we're not having uniform emerges this may be something that would have very significant impact on on our overall yield um I would say there are other you know instances where this technology would would definitely probably have some benefit and that would be areas or scenarios where poor plantar ground contact can occurs this would be like in no-till situations um planning into cover crops which are becoming very popular in different parts of the country are excessive residue uh rough soil surface or seed bed you know I've got some feels sometimes that we get a lot of row unit bounce and we can kind of dampen that with some of the downforce technology and then high speed planning if we're planting 10 miles an hour across the field I think naturally that row unit is going to want to lift up out of the ground and probably have some bounces associated with it so if we have some sort of a downforce technology there to help with that I think we can see additional benefit there so the three types of downforce um they all work similarly we've got manual Springs pneumatic airbags and hydraulic downforce um but they all kind of react I guess to the soil resistance in a little different way so with a manual spring we're going to be applying a static downward Force only we're basically setting the load that we want those Springs to carry and then it's it's maintaining that across the field pneumatic airbags depending on the system we have the ability to apply static downforce but we can also lift up on some of these systems where if we're putting excessive force and maybe burying c2d we can pick up on that and then the same with with the hydraulic downforce um you know where we're applying maybe a static or a dynamic force and with the dynamic aspect of downforce um you know this is often when we see a system that's got load pins on it we're measuring the load that's traveling on the gauge wheels and then that cylinder is actually reacting to the amount of load that that's traveling on that with hopes that you know we're maintaining that that uniform seed depth so again in soybean you know some of the limitations I see with with plantar downforce again goes back to yield um the yield benefits I think are somewhat variable depending on where you're at uh and it may not be worth the cost to add you know maybe the Cadillac treatment of the best downforce you can get um you know for example if you're planting into a conventionally tilled field where soil resistance is very low and we don't have a lot of uh you know things to overcome to get the seed uniformly placed in the ground you know we might not see uh some of that additional benefit some of the research that we've done here in the Southeast uh we did show that we could we could impact the rate of emergence on soybean but again even with the the difference in emergent rates uh we never really saw a huge benefit in yield um but again uniform emergence is less important than soybean than compared to Corn we've we've established that and then you know again how variable are the soils across the field is there a benefit to up Force we see that sometimes times where we may have a Sandy sandier portion of the field where the planter May naturally want to dive and bury seed deeper you know I think we're seeing this more in a very sea depth responding crops like uh maybe cotton where we don't want to plant it very deep but again just something to kind of think about and then what about the residue level that we're planting into you know all these different factors I think will help kind of address or assess whether we need to add these Technologies to the planter so moving to in for our application again this is kind of the third biggest topic of today's presentation um we've got the increased precision and ability to apply a product on the go um you know in several different areas with relation to the seed so you know we've got the ability now we can apply liquids uh you know to the seed in between the seed below the seed to the side of the seed we can apply granular products you know on off very easily different different Avenues with that as well and so I think uh you know depending on the product we may see some benefit to this whether it's a biological um you know that needs to be pretty close to the seed or an inoculant or maybe with a Pneumatic side you know these are things that we've been thinking about as researchers you know if we need a high rate of a pneumaticide or something like that could we offset it from the seed to maybe help with any Fido that we might see on the plants as they emerge Etc and then same thing with fertilizer you know applying salts in the furrow uh we can have some seedling issues and that sort of thing so maybe if we're able to shift that away from the seed we might have some better luck with those products but again you know there's always limitations to some of the some of the different things that we're incorporating again benefit uh what is the benefit to having increased accuracy of the product um you know all these different Technologies are going to be great and I think it's going to give us a lot more um opportunities to try different things that we traditionally have not been able to do but there's a quote that I like to say when it comes to Precision Ag and it's really that our Precision capabilities have surpassed our decision making capabilities and what I mean by that is we have a lot of really good Hardware on the market and we can do a lot of things that we haven't always been able to done or been able to do but um you know trying to make that decision of how do we incorporate this or what's the best way I think is where you know it's going to be more site specific on your geography of where you are your production system the crops you're planting the products you want to apply um again depending on what we're putting in for o you know how we're doing this we could enhance or we could reduce you know some of the fire or crop injury that we're seeing depending on the product but there's something else to think about in terms of soybean or seed rates are so much higher than some of the other crops in our rotation such as cotton or corn that um you know with some of these liquid products where we're using pulse with modulation to apply you know maybe a seed squirt or a seed shot you know can't we keep up with being able to apply product to each individual seed so again these are some of the things that I would be thinking about if you're purchasing or thinking about purchasing some of these products specifically for uh soybean so our fourth topic going into row cleaners um you know I think in historically these have kind of been um you know a very basic add-on to the planner uh essentially what we're trying to do is just you know move any of the residue or trash that we have obstructing the the planner's job to do its job we're we're going to really promote good seed to soil contact um but historically I think with some of the options that we've had they've been a little bit difficult to set up you know especially on rolling topography it's like you typically would see you know especially with a rigidly fixed uh row cleaner they're either doing a really good job or they're they're turning into maybe like a tillage tool you know we're digging a trench or something like that so I think there's been a lot of focus here with um you know some of the floating ability and some of the on the go control that we have from the cab where you know we're able to continuously Monitor and uh you know I guess set these Road cleaners to do the best job that we can so again I think the goal of this is to move trash or residue not really till and oftentimes with some of the traditional ones that we've had I think um you know just the effort and time to go back and keep changing the settings on those you know you you wouldn't be able to cover any ground by doing that and so some of these newer technologies have made that much easier as we move forward so there are several different options to choose from you know we've got still have rigid uh row cleaners on the market you can have floating types um you can have some that again like I mentioned you can control from the cab in terms of you know how much how aggressive they're doing you know how they are floating but then we can add additional features to them as well whether it's a two by two culture we're putting out some fertilizer you know for corn or another crop in rotation um and we can also add no-till cultures for that situation so I think you know overall with a row cleaner it needs to be more specific to the operation uh and cropping system to get the most maximum benefit uh that you can again I think there's a lot of limited yield response from just adding a row cleaner um I think it goes back to what does the technology developed for we're trying to improve our seed bed that the row unit is planting into so of course if we're planting into a heavy residue or a cover crop where the planter is not able to accurately plant the seed into the ground um you know there probably is more of a benefit from you know a row cleaner or having a good row cleaner but again um I think moving some of this residue out of the way is going to help compensate or alleviate some of these sub-optimal stands that we have seen and so like the last kind of topic that we wanted to address and and go through it for today's uh you know presentation would be on the planner closing wheels so just from my perspective I think there's been more recent advances in this space than most of the others um but if you look at different you know closing wheels that are available the technology and the options are are very broad I mean there's so many different combinations that you can do with different styles of Wheels um how they actually pinch throw or or don't um but I think again going back to you know what's the goal of a good job with the closing wheel and I think it goes to we obviously want to close the seed for a uh maximize or increase our seed to soil contact remove any air pockets that we might have around that seed and then most importantly we don't want to manipulate where the seed was originally placed so if we're going in and we're putting you know downforce on the planter we've got our our trash cleaners and all this but then everything that we just did is getting reversed by the closing wheel setup that we have you know that's something that I think we need to to pay attention to um moving forward so again with the with the closing Wheels there's really not there I don't think that there's you know one size does not fit all and I think that's the beauty of this is it's going to depend again soil type are we having problems uh closing the furrow in your current system you know we if we are you know maybe we can just buy a more aggressive or or a different style closing wheel to be able to collapse the sidewall of the seat for or do a better job um do we see a yield benefit in soybean from a closing wheel um you know some of the research is you know I guess depending on where you're at or or the issues that you may or may not be having historically there may be many of the plantar technologies that are being developed like I mentioned earlier probably being developed and pushed really hard for corn just because it is uh more responsive to some of the technologies that are being developed um but a simple strip trial that we've done in the past uh here in the Southeast where we did not see any difference in closing wheel where we compared two rubber Wheels a rubber plus a spike and then some cast iron closing Wheels as well and really kind of the note that we took back on that these were soybeans planted double prop scenario behind small grain in that particular trial that we did you know we were doing a pretty good job of closing the seat for across all of the treatments so if we would have been in a different soil texture maybe it would have been a lot drier the ground would have been harder where we were having an issue with that or if we would have been too aggressive and pitching the seat up out of the ground you know I think that's kind of where we would start to see the benefit uh from modifying or changing the closing wheels that we've got so kind of in summary for what we went through today again I think you as the farmer or consultant uh can now you know manipulate pretty much every component of the planner uh obviously increasing precision and productivity so I think you know if you have an area of the planner your your specific planning system is giving you issues or you think you can improve on there's probably a technology out now that could do that uh but understanding how the technology performs in a specific scenario or a system and especially in each crop I think is really essential and uh you know lastly the yield benefit and the quit return on investment on many of these components they're somewhat Limited in soybean compared to other crops is corn but not to say that they shouldn't be used you know if the planter is going to be used across commodities for sure I think the better we can do uh the the better we're setting ourselves up moving into that growing season Etc but um with that being said that was kind of the the initial introduction to what our publication is is kind of went into uh in terms of planner technology obviously it goes into a little bit more detail on than what I covered today but again we wanted to really give you a good overview of um of kind of the things that we're we're looking at and how they respond to soybean so real quick before we start the question and answers um we've got a QR code here for the fact see if you're interested in that it's posted online at the following website and again it kind of goes into these five big topics a little bit more in depth in terms of you know each of the components and where we see some of the benefits as they relate to soybean so that being said I'm on the two I'm going to stop sharing my screen so that y'all can see all of the the panelists a little bit better um again we've got five panelists including myself kind of scattered out across the the United States um you know each of us kind of are representing a different um you know I guess niche in our specific areas but um really we want to just give everybody an opportunity to ask questions so there is a q a box that you know if you do have a specific question please feel free to chime in and and ask us the question and we'll kind of deviate it out and and try to answer the question as best we can so um you know with that being said we're going to kind of start into this one of the the first questions that I see uh you know really come through the the chat is saying you know for your soybean variable rate programs in South Carolina what kind of soils have been have you been cutting back and uh increasing rates on and he said I know it'll change uh region by region but just curious so um I guess that was a little bit directed to me I'm going to answer it and then I want to kind of you know ask a few y'all what y'all seen in your in your research as well but um you know in South Carolina with our the variable rate work that we've done uh we've tried to develop prescriptions based on real data that's come out of the field from each farm so it's definitely highly site specific you know we're trying to gather as much data as we can but what we've done in our specific uh systems is if I wanted to go make a variable rate prescription for a farmer down the road I would ask him you know where is his kind of seed rate that he's you know currently uniformly seeding and then typically what we'll do in the first years maybe increase that rate by 15 and 30 percent and then decrease it by 15 and 30 percent and play at five or or more uniform rate strips across that field hopefully capturing a lot of the variability across the field and soil texture uh we come in that fall Harvest with a yield Monitor and um and then kind of analyze the data to say okay if we come up with different management zones whether it be EC or some other type of a base layer what uniform rate responded or performed the best in each of these zones and so it really kind of depends what I think we've seen in some of the the trials that we have done in our better land we have been able to back off a little bit on some of the seed rates and some of the poor saltier land that we have uh we've seen a little bit better of a yield response maybe where we increasing that rate but overall it is definitely very specific to the field I think in the scenario um overall I would say we have a lot of non-irrigated soybean in our state so rainfall is definitely going to implicate that too but um that's kind of what we've seen and again we have had instances where um we thought we had a lot of variability in the field but at the end of the day when we go and look and do these kind of titrations sort of seed rate trials with these uniform rate strips we don't always see a real big benefit in doing variable rate compared to what the girl was already doing uniformly so I know Emma's done a lot of work um you know in the Midwest and I was in Florida with variable rate I don't know if you have any additional comments on what y'all seen in the midwest with variable rape honestly similar story in the midwest we're seeing that sometimes variable rate seating and help you reduce your seed costs but we're usually not seeing increases in yields very much soybeans are very plastic and can be productive at a wide range of seeding rates in a wide range of environments and agreed that in dry land soybean usually are base layers for management Zone delineation that are correlated with water retention or even elevation aren't going to be better at making management zones than some of the more nutrient availability related parameters uh so a pretty similar story in the Midwest and South Carolina sure so I guess kind of piggybacking on that um you know Mike I don't know if y'all have looked at any variable rate out in the Mid-South at all yet or uh you know have any interest in doing that I'm sure there's some people probably doing some very bright corn but you know have you have you heard anything on on these kind of seed rates or where you're cutting back or increasing or that sort of thing I mean if we're playing we're planting at 120 140 000 seed per acre here and a bag of soybean seed is considered cheap enough that you're be accepting higher risk by reducing your seeding rate significantly so you know and we're in early production systems so you really don't want to cut your seeding rates down if you're trying to you know hit an early April planting date um so I think from our perspective here in Mississippi um it's a pretty tall order to to cut your seeding rates uh given the level of risk you might you might adopt we just have poorly drained soils so um you know we don't want to risk flooding out stand ending up with the sub-optimal standing risking a replant scenario so um but specific to your question I mean I don't see a lot of adoption of the variable rate seeding technology here in Mississippi okay I guess kind of another I guess seed delivery kind of question I know there is a lot of interest in high-speed planting especially in the midwest in the Mid-South um you know Mike I know you've done some work with that here recently specifically but you know what scenarios or cropping systems are you probably seeing or recommending uh people look into this high-speed planning is it more on the planting window type of thing or are we trying to keep equipment size small and just be able to cover more Acres with less equipment um you know kind of what are your thoughts on that moving forward yeah I'm in a pretty good situation in the in the Delta area of our of Mississippi where we've got you know long straight runs um of course we might have water Furs and things that we got to deal with there too so uh given the importance of planting tea and the very narrow window like I said we got poorly drained soil so if we get a rain we could be out of the field for a week or two during that critical planting window and we know that planting date along with variety selection is probably two of the most critical and components to to maximizing our yield potential so uh given that critical uh planting window if we can get more Acres planted in the same time in that in that time frame we expect to get a a yield jump um just because we're planting on time of course there's other things you need to consider on the back end of that is where you're going to put all that if your bins are all full of corn you got to make sure you got the capacity to get those beans out of the field into the elevator so there's an there's a few factors to consider above and beyond just you know planting more more Acres quicker but uh you know conceptually that's what we're after right no that makes good says I know um with like you know for instance in the Southeast um I think there is a lot of interest in the high-speed planning um it doesn't necessarily fit in with all of our our practices just because we are again pulling a strip till in tandem with the planter we can only go so fast our field size is small but I think there is a lot of value and potential for this you know as you know equipment prices continue to increase labor shortage has become to be more of a challenge with people if I can put one guy on a planter and cover twice the amount of acres in a given time you know that might be a lot better in terms of a a whole Farm profitability standpoint you know you utilize the technology is the best of our ability um let's see I guess uh another question that's come through is you know what are your thoughts on Precision planting and branching capacity of the soybean so you know I know Chad you've you've done a lot with with soybeans and Physiology and some of the agronomic practices you know have you looked at anything with uh singulation and and maybe the the branching capacity of a soybean and you know if there's any effect on that do we get more of a bushy plant if we're uh you know singulating it very well compared to you know erratic drop kind of a planner sure that's a good question Michael and a good question by the the person who asked it um soybeans are tremendously flexible when it comes to low population and so I think we we did some early seating rate studies goodness almost 20 years ago now and over time as we've continued to repeat those and repeat them across the U.S we find that when we get to these really low populations so 75 60 000 and 15 inch rows that all the beans Bush out and we'll fill in um we've we've been surprised at just how competitive those beans are particularly when we're in the higher yield environment that maybe that's the one surprise is that when yield levels tended to be at the higher end we needed fewer beans to get there and when we got into more stressful conditions whether it's double crops in our region or just a stressful condition because of a soil type or something like that then you need to have some higher populations to help overcome some of that probably has something to do with those beans in our case with the double crops having a shorter window and just needing to get to canopy much quicker one thing that most those studies showed was that you know we've got to be somewhere close to 95 percent light interception right around the time that the beans flower within a week or two after flowering starts in order to maximize yield and that's probably the explanation for why those those higher populations are needed in the stressful conditions but you know comparatively to Corn which many of the Growers on here today are familiar with you know beans are much less sensitive to that plant to plant spacing and much less sensitive to populations than what corn is for sure so kind of moving along with some of the questions that are coming in another really good question uh that just came through would be um would be the the girl would be interested or curious to hear what leading cultures people have had success or failures with especially going into a tall cover crop um there's some some concern about maybe hair pinning uh some of the the residue I guess with a wavy no-till Coulter but have heard leading cultures can still help with with emerges so I know um You Know cover crops are being grown you know all over the country John I don't know if y'all uh been doing any cover crop work in South Dakota you know have you seen any big issues with um no-tilling into a cover crop or where you would think that a no-till culture uh could you know add any benefit or take anything away from soybean planting oh we are doing a fair amount of cover crop research up here but unfortunately that's another crew that's leading that up um so I'm not real familiar with the different things they're looking at I know that my program we've done some yield trials and soybeans uh into a knee-high Rye cover crop you know and we've just used a straight Coulter uh seems like we've had great results with that right what about Chad have you all done have you all done or what about like a no-till situation where the ground's really hard I mean are you definitely recommending a no-till culture every time are you having issues with it where we've got different types of cover crop yeah that's a great question Michael and um a lot of our Growers are moving to the Rope cleaners instead of a leading culture and the ones that have a culture I see more bubble colder than I do wavy colder and the heavy residue I think some of the issues particularly with some of the wider wavy colders is they're not slicing through everything properly and you know you went through the adjustments that can be done with the row cleaners and you showed pictures where they had the silver caps on the one the other ones were solid those are a couple of ways to get around the issue of of that cover crop wrapping up on the row cleaners but the ability to set those row cleaners in the floating pattern and to be able to adjust it I think our farmers are finding more success with that than they are with that Leading Edge culture gotcha Emma what's going on in Florida I know y'all are y'all are probably real heavy on cover crop down there have you had any experiences down there yet um you know with any of the planning conditions or issues that you had and I don't know how long residue kind of persists or lingers on uh in that environment but uh this is actually the first year I've been here for soybean planting in Florida we do tend to have a little bit less residue at planting a lot of our systems are pretty heavy with tillage even if there was a covered crop uh but this will be the first year that I get to see Florida so we've been planting myself okay and I guess kind of you know really what I've seen too is is with some of these it all kind of goes back to you know if you can get away with planting with just a row cleaner rather than having that slicing no-till culture um you know I think that's just something you got to evaluate it's going to probably depend on you know how green the cover crop is when you're planting what the the growth habit or how much biomass we've actually got with the cover crop that we're trying to plant into um kind of going back I guess to variable rate seating we had another question come through uh variable rate soybean planting will not show a change in yield uh lower populations will compensate for equal yields but higher populations means a thicker canopy and shading of ground faster uh this faster shading of planted ground is utilized as a means of weed and grass control the best there is in fact so um I guess it was more of a comment with with the the density um you know I think as we progress with soybean planting you know I think there's more interest in maybe narrowing up row spacing um which is obviously going to probably hopefully help with with some of the weed control issues that we have had uh maybe in traditional wide row soybeans I know in the South uh we've had a lot of wide row soybeans just because we're planting cotton and peanuts on white roads but we're starting to see a shift here to the 30 inch and less you know 15 inch soybeans I think are becoming a little bit more popular um you know in terms of down the road seed rate or or thickness of canopy you know I don't think that at least some of the seed breaks that I've been looking at with variable rate and soybean um we haven't really pushed the limit that much on the low end that I think we're having issues with with no shading in the crop or weed control issues I don't know you know have y'all pushed the limits that much anywhere on sebrate just in general where uh we're having some issues I mean I know it's something to be mindful of and make sure that we're not creating another problem further down the road by doing some of this but um you know Chad or or Mike I don't know if y'all have any comments to make on that if they don't I do um we have pushed the seating rate down to about 80 000 seats per acre in some spots in Ohio and then have really terrible weather immediately following planting ended up with plant stands right around 12 000 an acre uh yields ended up being fine but we had to go in with another Riverside application uh because there was no ground cover and we've also had issues on the other side where we had better than expected weather at emergence and in some of our higher seating rate zones had really good emergence and ended up having issues with lodging so being mindful that you want to minimize risk and making sure that on your very high seating rates and your very low seating rates if you have weather outside of your Norm you're still going to be okay if you push too far in either direction you can get yourself into trouble yeah I agree with that I think that's something very valuable to kind of point out is you know it with the range of seating rates that we utilize for variable rate prescriptions you know we obviously want to push it enough that we will see a potential benefit you know whether we're trying to cut back to save on seed costs or increase in our poor poor areas to increase the number of plants that we're we're putting out there but uh you know obviously we can't have bad weather we deal with it every year in a dry weather depending on when we're planting or something like that so if we do cut back I guess we want to make sure that hopefully we still get that optimal stand established that we're not hindering our yield where we think that even though we might have um you know really good uh solar conditions that you know I think that's really important well and Emmy hit on something else here Michael yeah um part of this is a replant question which nobody's asked but we'll jump into it for a moment I mean the the data would suggest and economics would suggest that you've got to be below 75 and maybe even 50 000 plants per acre in cases before it would economically justify a replant it might trigger and that that includes triggering a second herbicide application to help clean up some of those weeds so you know so Emma's first comment about what you said twelve thousand on the low end Emma so I mean that's tremendous you're harvesting little bushes out there at that time yeah right very very hard on the cutting bar on the machine but the point is is that these beans can handle extremely low populations well below what any farmer thinks is acceptable and as long as that feels not on in the in the main road where everybody sees it or it's by the shop probably safe to go ahead and leave it yeah and speaking of cutting bar stress we actually measured fuel usage and engine load and didn't have any uh noticeable issues there it's interesting interesting point um you know I don't I don't know if uh [Music] if anybody else has got like a lot of or any other real specific questions um that's on that's on the the presentation today we we had one more come in um kind of with regards to the the termination of a rye um you know are we rolling or crimping or chemical control and that sort of thing and I'm assuming this is kind of more related to you know are we seeing better planting conditions where we're rolling the Rye or crimping the Rye or you know planting green or desiccating it um I could speak for my my state I think a lot of it's probably uh you know just depends on the grower I think we have a little bit of everything I think we have people that are planting into standing crop we've got some that are rolling it down maybe even rolling it with the planter in the same pass um we've got some that are going out and burning it down and then you know it's really not having a big impact on their planning operation I'd say the people that are planting into it green or even crimping it ahead of the planter um you know they're definitely going to have the more aggressive trash cleaners no-till cultures Etc to make sure that um you know we're getting good soil to seed contact again it kind of goes back to our operation here we are doing a lot of you know strip till into these things a lot of our strip till uh rigs have got you know maybe a no-till culture on that or it's got some kind of fluted culture behind it we're still able to move some trash so I think it really just kind of depends on I'd say that you know if you're wanting to minimize the impact you would have on the planter doing a good job uh for example with Rye I would think that you know leaving it standing and then killing it would probably be a little bit easier to plant into rather than rolling it down in a mat and leaving it green um you know but I don't know is is anybody on the panel had any experiences with that or you know have anything else to add in terms of what they've seen with planning into some of these uh different types of cover crops and things that you know everybody's kind of leaning more towards I mean I've seen you know people trying to terminate late and their their ride cover crop late and then end up with a stand effect just we think because of all allopathy um so what we try to do when I was at Florida is we would want to terminate that cover crop uh and hope for a we didn't have irrigation but hope for a leaching rainfall event to watch watch some of those chemicals out of the seed Zone prior to planting so that's one thing that we witnessed on some of our Farms down down in southeast yeah I would say oh sorry Chad go ahead well we've got some Growers that are doing a roller crimping uh with some GMO beans and chemical control it's working pretty well for them to do it that way some disease pressure is elevated slugs or a bigger issue in that type system got some organic farms that are they're doing it as well but their issue is by the time they plant they're getting good suppression of weeds in between the rows it's within the row where they've cleared out the the cover crop residue they're getting a flush of weeds in there um to the point it's it's defeating their original purpose of why they crimped it over so we have a similar stance to what what Mike just said where we'd love to see the crop terminated at least two weeks before chemically terminated at least two weeks before we plant um to prevent the cover crop from becoming a weed on the cash crop right um yeah we've had two more questions come through so I want to kind of address those you know before we kind of have to wrap up today but you gotta you got a South Dakota perspective on cover crop yep oh I didn't have much to add there I was just gonna say I'm most of ours is killed with chemical control and you know the big no-tillers in the central part of the state they want to plant in a standing residue they don't want to roll it down flat or or have to deal with anything like that right so kind of these these last two questions one's more related uh the variable rate seating and one's I guess more online with maybe some of the planting date effect that we have on soybean but uh the first question in exploring soybean variable rate um seeding you know bay or this this individual is exploring it uh on the results from soil microbiome soil sampling specifically disease infertility uh have any of us or any institutions done any work uh working with the micro microbiome data so I'm assuming they're trying to um you know alter seed rate based on what's going on in the microbiome as a data layer compared to maybe soil EC or some other data layer I would say at least from my perspective no we have not looked at that um yep I mean that might be something that we need to start looking at uh in at least in my state traditionally we don't have a tremendous amount of soybean disease I guess from a Seedling perspective um you know fertility really with us uh you know we get a lot of leaching in our Sandy soils and that sort of thing I think we're making a lot of poultry litter and traditional fertilizer applications already but you know that might be something moving forward we've got very low uh I guess organic matter soils as well but um you know has anybody even heard you know of any of this work being done for data layers no in Ohio we've done some with fertility organic matter and pH were more successful than some of our cation nutrients or generating Maps uh one thing is with the soil microbiome data making sure that it's sampled at a scale that makes sense for variable rate seeding is important some of those tests are very expensive and if your planter is able to change rates every 10 feet but your sampling is every 10 acres it's not going to be very high resolution data and you're not going to be able to get a very uh a mouth with very many different zones in it right I think Trace genomics can pick up on things like uh white mold and I don't know if you ever did anything like that when you're in Wisconsin but we do have producers that are varying their rate uh they're cutting their populations way back in areas of the field uh that have high white mold pressure so um haven't done any work on that specifically at the college but I know that producers are looking at it that makes sense too you know we we had a lot of seedling disease in our area with peanut you know a little bit different crop but um you know we've seen some differences where we Ultra seed rate and kind of the progression of the disease down the road where we you know have really thick stands or a lot of seeds in the row we kind of see the progression of disease being able to spread more than where we're spacing it out so that definitely makes sense uh if we have historical data showing some of the diseased areas of the field where we could alter seed rate to maybe help slow or or stop the spread of some of these diseases I think we have time for like the work on uh on having two Hoppers with different seed treatments right for a variable rate and that's something that we didn't really get into but I think is maybe worth mentioning is you know we talked about a lot of Technologies but we do have the capabilities now to do some multi-variety planting so if we do have you know host plant resistance in certain varieties that we don't in others uh you know that might be a good opportunity for that you know we don't really have white mold and soybean here so I can't speak to what varieties are available but you know we've done stuff looking at you know hybrid selection whether it's irrigated or a dry land corner and swapping hybrids uh based on kind of how they they respond in corn obviously but um you know I think there's some bleed over with that on soybean but I want to finish up with one more quick question before we we kind of wrap things up um the last question I've been asked if the benefit of the Precision of a row unit planner is worth pla

2023-04-09 12:34

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