We’ve got a serious disconnect in the soybean value chain. At the Illinois Soybean Association’s “What’s in a soybean? What’s in it for you?” event, I learned the first three links in the chain get paid for yield – the seed company, farmer and grain elevator. Once the soybean processor gets a hold of those soybeans, yield is a tiny concern compared to protein and oil content. The end user, most likely a poultry farm according to the…

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There are some things in life you have to see for yourself to really appreciate them. Unfortunately, Arkansas’ invasion of Palmer Amaranth, commonly called pigweed, is just such a situation. As part of Dow AgroScience’s Crop Technology Media Summit, we flew to Batesville, Ark. to witness the pigweed problem. At a farm near Newport, Ark., farmer Malcolm Haigwood explained the situation. In 2005, the first pigweed problem was identified in eastern Arkansas, near the Tennessee…

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Each growing season, it's fun to check out the different test plots and experiments hosted by universities and companies.   This year, there's one in particular that I'm watching in anticipation. It's the 2010 Yield Challenge, sponsored by the Illinois Soybean Association. One reason it's so exciting: actual farmers are designing the "experiments" to achieve the highest yield possible.   Here's how it's structured. Teams of 5-10 growers compete against other teams within their…

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This year at University of Illinois' Agronomy Day, Emerson Nafziger, an Extension crop specialist, showcased a plot of soybeans.   Nafziger had one goal with this particular plot. His aim was to replicate Missouri farmer Kip Cullers' record-breaking soybean yield of 154 bushels per acre.   Earlier this week, I ran into Nafziger at U of I. He'd just harvested and tabulated the results of his replication experiment. Nafziger grew two plots: irrigated and not irrigated. The irrigated plot…

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