PTI Farm challenging the status quo

PONTIAC, Ill. — The Precision Technology Institute Farm kicked off its annual field days with visitors from near and far.

The July 28-Aug. 1 and Aug. 11-15 field days focus on agronomic research, operating equipment and optimizing planter performance on the 400-acre site that includes more than 100 research trials.

“This farm is all about challenging the status quo,” Jason Webster, Precision Planting lead agronomist and PTI director, told farmers from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and New York, as well as Australia.

“Sometimes on our farms, we get feeling comfortable with how we manage our operation. We do things the same as what we’ve done the year before, and the year before that. Dad taught us how to do things. Granddad taught us how to do things and, by golly, that’s what we do, and so we get in that bubble where we feel comfortable. We know how to do it, and that’s just what we’re going to do.

“The problem is, I’m the type of person that needs the confirmation check mark to prove that I’m doing the best things farm management-wise to get me, one, the highest yield possible, or two, and probably more importantly, the highest profits for return on investment on a per-acre basis.

“In order to do that, we’ve got to put trials in. We’ve got to put plots in. A lot of you probably do that on your own farm.

“We know that academia says that in order to test something to prove it’s repeatable, you’ve got at least replicate it three times and you’ve got to test it for three years. It’s hard to do — you can, but it’s hard to do. It takes time, it takes money, and those are two things in farming that we don’t have enough, and so we do that here at this farm.

“We take what everybody’s used to doing, and we just compare it to something else, and we’re just trying to find ways to be better.”

Webster is nearing his 40th year of farming, and every year he reflects on what he has done and what can be done to improve the following year to improve profitability.

According to University of Illinois data, farmers have averaged a profit of $103 per acre in corn/soybean rotations over the past 24 years that included years of losses and years of profits.

Losses are projected for the current year, according to U of I projections.

“We look at this and say, OK, it’s a challenging economic time,” Webster said. “How are we going to farm smarter to help overcome some of this? With the trials that we put in on this farm, we’re trying to say, what are the things that we need to be doing to increase this number on a per-acre basis?”

2025 Growing Season

Webster reviewed what the Livingston County farm experienced thus far in the growing season.

“It really started at the end of 2024. We had some real drought conditions at the end of the summer last year, and those conditions continued through the fall and all winter. We had only 7 inches of snow over the wintertime,” he said.

The PTI Farm includes a holding pond that collects tile-drained water from adjacent fields. The water is used during the growing season for drip irrigation when needed.

“We weren’t getting moisture in the pond that what we use for irrigation. The pond was completely dry all the way through March 10 when we finally got some rains, got the tile flowing and it filled up the farm,” Webster said.

“We’ve been working it pretty hard pumping out of that pond because we’re down on moisture again this year.”

As of July 29, the farm had 11 inches of rain, 5.66 inches below the average.

“My dad told me as a kid, ‘You can grow pretty good corn crop with 10 to 11 inches of rain, but the rain better come at the right time.’ That’s the challenge with it,’” Webster said.

“So, we do have some irrigation here, we are pumping some water, and the crop looks really good considering we haven’t got any large rainfall events, but we’re hanging in there.”

Disease Challenges

Many questions the past few years have centered around tar spot and its management.

“We had tar spot here on this farm in, I think, 2021, and it was one of the hardest diseases to manage,” Webster said.

“Going into that year I said if we get tar spot, I think I know to manage it and control it. I was wrong. I failed that miserably. We were spraying fungicides three, sometimes four times trying to control it, and I don’t know that we ever did.

“We keep hearing about tar spot alley coming through Iowa, the center part of Iowa, southern Illinois, where we had lots of rain. We found it here on this farm, but we’ve been so dry, I just don’t think the disease has been able to progress very much.

“We’ve got one round of fungicides on the corn crop right now. I’m prepared for a second one here anytime, but we are vigilantly looking for tar spot, but fortunately it has not progressed.”

Fertilizer Costs

Looking forward to the 2026 growing season, Webster is reevaluating his crop nutrition practices due to rising fertilizer costs.

“I’m a strip-tiller here at this farm and so we’re going to band fertilizer, but I’m having a hard time getting pre-pay prices for DAP and potash. I’m particularly worried about DAP and rumors of $1,000 a ton for 18-46-0. If that happens, I’m not buying any. I’m just not going to do it. The breakeven or the return on investment, there’s no way possible way it can be there,” he said.

“I texted my retailer that we worked with a lot this morning. I said, can you give me a prepay price on DAP and potash? I’m asking him every week. And the answer was, ‘No, I will not give you a price.’

“I don’t know what potash is going to do, but I don’t think it’s going to go up near to what DAP will be. So, we’ll probably just be applying potash only, and we’ll find another way to address the phosphorous situation.

“With our banding program, if you’re a grower that can strip-till and put a little bit of DAP down, our data would say we can reduce the amount of dry fertilizer we’re putting underneath the plant, and we’re going to take advantage of that for sure. But this is something we’re watching closer.”