Spring is here! Hopefully you’ve had a chance to look through the 2020 PFR Book and pick out a PFR Proven™ product or practice to try for 2021. With planting season here, we wanted to share a few early-season PFR Proven products and practices to consider implementing on your farm this spring.

The New Year is here! This is a great time to evaluate your current cropping program and decide the areas you can seek to improve in 2021. Planters are a key priority for us in Practical Farm Research (PFR)®. The planter pass sets the stage for the rest of the growing season; its success is vital for raising higher yields. PFR has tested several planter attachments and aftermarket options.

Innovative. Comprehensive. Practical. Proven. All concepts that describe the content in the 2020 PFR Book — coming soon online and to a mailbox near you — plus the upcoming 2021 virtual PFR Insight meetings. Jam-packed with more data-driven decision-making information than ever, the 2020 PFR Book will include harvest results and observations from six PFR sites and three cooperator locations. Our 2021 PFR Insight Meeting content will be focused on what in-season management products and practices can bring the greatest profitability to the farm.

Beck’s has six Practical Farm Research (PFR)® sites spread throughout the Midwest in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and Iowa. Although Beck’s PFR sites don’t exist yet in Michigan, Minnesota, and Missouri, customers and dealers alike are implementing PFR Proven™ strategies on their farms. Follow along throughout the 2020 growing season to see how they put Beck’s PFR into practice.

If there is one thing that the 2019 growing season showed us, it’s that you can’t outguess the weather. For many, 2019 ended up being a year we wanted to put behind us. With Practical Farm Research (PFR)® looking at many products and practices across several locations, we have developed several key strategies that will help optimize yield potential and success. As discussed at many of our 2020 PFR Insight Meetings, we have determined five strategies that we believe will give farmers the highest likelihood to succeed and named them PFR Proven™ Success Strategies.

What do you want? More profitability and yield! When do you want it? Now! How are you going to get there? By checking out the latest additions to Beck’s PFR Proven™ products and practices! Over the past four harvest seasons, Beck's PFR program has tested hundreds of products and practices to identify the most consistent, yield-enhancing and money-making strategies for your farm. Added to the elite PFR Proven class were 18 products and practices for corn and 10 for soybeans in 2019.

Join Chris Robinson, PFR Location Lead, and Field Agronomist and Herbicide Specialist, Austin Scott, in this PFR Report as they discuss different ways to add profitability to your wheat crop.

One question we get asked a lot is how we apply nitrogen (N) on our wheat acres. What we have observed in Practical Farm Research (PFR)^® is that, regardless of the source of N applied, split applications pay. Some of the benefits of split applications include increased yield, increased N efficiency, and the potential for lower environmental losses.

In this latest report from southern Illinois, PFR location lead Jonathan Perkins and PFR operator Joe Bolte discuss the 2017 planting date study for corn and soybeans and why it’s so important.

Happy New Year from Beck’s Practical Farm Research (PFR)® team! With a new year underway, now is the time to evaluate your crop performance last year and consider new and innovative management strategies to adopt for the next growing season. I encourage you all to attend one of our 2017 PFR Insight Meetings to help you with this important process.