BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Prairie State farmers planted 74% of soybean acres by the end of May, well ahead of last year’s 19% and the five-year average of 51% and the focus now turns to in-field management decisions and return-on-investment.
Jason Haegele, WinField United region agronomist in Illinois, sees the potential for high soybean yields when farmers utilize the tools that are in their control.
“A soybean crop has so many different opportunities throughout the growing season due to the crop’s indeterminate nature to make yield-increasing decisions or yield-decreasing decisions based on nutrient limitations, diseases, stresses that are present,” Haegele said in an Illinois Soybean Association podcast.
“Throughout the growing season those growers who are interesting in pushing soybean yields have a lot of opportunities to make agronomic decisions to ultimately impact yield and profitability.”
The agronomist provided his recommendations going forward and looked back at the planting season in a question-and-answer session.
There are tight margins this year and tough decisions have to be made on a case-by-case basis in terms of input and profitability. What recommendations do you have for farmers with that in mind?
“I think back to the ‘Six Secrets of Soybean Success’ project that Dr. Fred Below at the University of Illinois worked on with the Illinois Soybean Association and about some of the factors in that that the grower can control. Certainly at this point with many soybean acres being in the ground, we have less of an opportunity to focus on variety selection, row spacing, seed treatment, those types of things.
“But as I think about the rest of the season, particularly in-season inputs like fertility and fungicide, there is a lot of opportunity to impact yield focused on those two different factors.
“Obviously, things like phosphorous and potassium are probably already set soil-applied nutrients. But we do have the opportunity to apply nutrients in-season and oftentimes that will come in the form of a foliar type nutrition product or a micronutrient.
“One of the tools growers could use to maybe decide what to apply or when to apply is tissue testing. That allows the grower to take a leaf sample from their field, have it analyzed by lab and based on that data they can decide which nutrients are maybe limiting and what product might be appropriate to address those nutrient limitations.
“That’s another great way to improve return on investment because in some cases you may take that tissue sample and find that your nutrients are adequate or mostly adequate and then you can decided maybe to not make an application based on that data from the tissue test.”
Below’s “six secrets” also included utilizing tools that enhance seed emergence and vigor to protect that plant.
“When you have high disease years, which are sometimes hard to predict, we would expect to benefit from a fungicide for both corn and soybeans. Data has shown that in a lot of cases we realize a yield benefit even in the absence of measurable disease or levels of disease that we would expect to be yield limiting.
“So, in many cases, growers can make the choice to go ahead and apply fungicide. You always have the opportunity to scout that field ahead of time to look for the presence of disease or maybe tailor your fungicide choice to the diseases that are present in that field.
“Other factors that impact the effectiveness of that fungicide application in terms of having bushels that you get back and that ultimate profit include things like focusing on nozzle selection, gallons per acre to get good coverage, the use of adjuvants, all simple agronomic decisions that can ultimately impact the outcome from that fungicide application.
“I think in many cases we’ve got really good potential for soybean yields this year due to early planting. We have a lot of season left ahead of us and things we can’t control like August rains, but there are things that are under our control like fertility inputs, fungicide and maybe other things that the grower wants to try in-season like plant growth regulators, biologicals, bio-stimulants. It may not be appropriate for the entire farm, but they’re always fun to try and see how they impact yield and profitability on individual farms and fields.”
While soybean planting progress was well ahead of last year and the five-year average, there are obviously still fields that need to be planted and replants needed in areas that experienced heavy rains earlier in May. What are some key management strategies for those scenarios?
“As we get into some of these later planted soybean situations or maybe replant situations, one of the areas I think will become a question will be around the topic of seed treatment. We know that seed treatment is especially important for early-planted soybeans when we think about planting into those cool and sometimes we conditions.
“We definitely need fungicide seed treatments in particular to protect against pathogens like pythium and phytophthora in those conditions. But even when we get into later planted situations where it’s a little bit warmer and the crop comes out of the ground a little bit faster, we can still have issues with rhizoctonia which favors warmer and a little bit dryer conditions and also phytophthora which continues to exist in warmer conditions, as well.
“Fungicides seed treatments are still important for later planted soybeans and then also with some of the newer innovations in soybean seed treatments in particular in thinking about pests and pathogens like sudden death syndrome and soybean cyst nematode. Those are pests that can still exist even with later planted soybeans.
“So, depending on the field, maybe taking a sample to understand soybean cyst nematode pressure in a field, those could be seed treatments that are still worthwhile to include even with these later planted or replanted situations.”