Going beyond the seed: Beck’s Practical Farm research removes guesswork

EL PASO, Ill. — For over two decades, the Beck’s Practical Farm Research program has provided data-driven information to help farmers make agronomic decisions on their own farms.

Results of the research trials are available online dating back to 2003 when field testing was conducted at Beck’s headquarters in Atlanta in central Indiana and on-farm trials by farmers in Indiana, Illinois, western Ohio and southern Michigan representing the company’s footprint at that time.

The stretch of the PFR system has grown along with Beck’s market footprint across the Midwest.

PFR sites are in Indiana, Kentucky, central Illinois, southern Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Mississippi Delta and Kansas, as well as trials on other farms.

The PFR program goes beyond the seed and focuses on the industry’s latest farming technologies and management practices.

Because it’s difficult for farmers to evaluate all the numerous options, PFR delivers replicated data from over 100 studies at research locations.

If a product performs well, it’s published. If it doesn’t perform well, it’s still published.

The results speak for themselves and the goal remains the same — to help all farmers succeed.

“On a yearly basis, we’re doing trials to basically help a grower make any decision that he might have to make every single year. So, nitrogen rates, timing, nitrogen products, planting dates, population, fungicides, planter attachments and trials like that just to help a farmer streamline his thought process, make a decision easier,” said Clayton Stufflebeam, Beck’s Hybrids PFR agronomist in central Illinois.

“We’re in sub-$4 corn and that’s more important than ever to be able to do that, where to spend your dollars, where not to, and then focus on that.”

As seed, equipment and software change, the PFR trials try to stay a step ahead of the new technology.

“We do the best we can. We’ve got technologies that we had well before anybody else did, and then there’s other technologies that maybe we’ve had, but it’s the same year or one year before a consumer can get it,” Stufflebeam said during the Central Illinois Becknology Day.

“Green Lightning is one of those. It’s had a consumer release this year, maybe last year, and we’re full-blown testing this season. Another example is there’s some planter technology that we tested early on that never made it to fruition and other technologies that had.

“High-speed planting is one of those. Through that process we learned there’s really no detriment to high-speed planting. So, that comes through our research.”

Diverse Conditions

Growing environments are different across states and individual farms. The information in the PFR book can be weighed by each location and as a whole.

For example, practices and conditions have wide variations in a state like Illinois that’s 390 miles long from north to south.

“You take El Paso versus Effingham in Illinois, probably as a farmer, I’m not going to take Effingham data if I live in El Paso. I’m not going to take their data with as much weight as I’m going to take El Paso data. They are two totally different environments, two totally different soils,” Stufflebeam said.

“What we do in our Practical Farm Research book at the end of the year, we’re going to show that data all wrapped up together as one average, and then we’re going to split it by location. We’re going to do the same exact trial, same protocol. Everything’s done the same way and then you can see it perform. That’s how we like to show it.

“So, if you live in Kansas, I’m going to pull with Kansas dataset. I might compare it to Illinois and if it’s positive, both places, it’s probably going to work.

“We’re just doing it all for the farmer. I farm at Lewistown (in west-central Illinois) myself and, of course, I use a lot of data for my own operation — and that’s our goal, to help farmers be successful.”

Free

The books are released annually and free to all farmers.

“You don’t have to be a Beck’s customer. Also, all of our research data is incredibly easy to find on our website, much easier than anybody else. What I like about it, it’s simple to read, look at, utilize, and other university-level research is a little bit harder for a farmer to digest and make a decision quickly,” Stufflebeam said.

“We try to take that guesswork out of it.”