48 Thank You for Your Trust & Time, Since 1999 Better Farming | November 2024 Selecting next year’s hybrid corn and soybean varieties is probably one of the single most important decisions to be made on the farm. November and December are busy months for just about everyone in agriculture but none more so than the person trying to secure a seed order from you. These two months are when seed companies want to see how much seed has been ordered of each hybrid or variety and then match that up with their own seed production and availability. While the farmer may only order a few bags or a few hundred bags of seed, the seed companies need to plan logistics for millions of bags of seed, sorted by seed size and treatments for each region in which they operate. It is not unusual for each hybrid to have 12 stock-keeping units based on seed sizes and treatment combinations. The logistics for servicing thousands of customers is a challenging one. For this reason, seed companies cannot wait until spring for a farmer to decide on what they want. To accomplish this task, they offer all sorts of marketing enticements to drive and reward customer behaviour to secure the seed order by December. They offer early-order discounts, volume discounts that decline with each passing month, prepaying discounts greater than the cost of borrowed money, and even free financing until spring. You must ask yourself if the incentives are reason enough to order seed from a particular seed company. The answer should be no. These are definitely considerations when making a final purchase but should not sway the seed-buying decision. Discounts are just one part of the transaction. There are other important points that drive decision-making. For corn, in order of importance, it is consistency of performance, standability, rapid dry-down at harvest, test weight, and yield. Another consideration is plant health and response to fungicide applications, especially considering that tar spot continues to be an issue, and choosing the right trait package based on pests that are prevalent, and crop rotation. For soybeans, it is maturity group considerations for planting wheat in the fall, yield, herbicide traits, tolerance to sudden death syndrome, and white mould, to name a few. The decisions surrounding hybrid selection are more complicated due to performance parity amongst the various seed corn company selections. MAXIMIZING YOUR SEED INVESTMENT Selecting corn & soybean seed for next season. By Dale Cowan crops: yield matter$ Decisions surrounding corn hybrid selection are complicated. Give yourself time to think it over. Dale Cowan photo
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc0MDI3