1
Mar
2021
If you watched the 2021 PFR Insight meetings, you know by now that FARMserver® is rolling out a whole new feature this spring. The Growth Model in FARMserver takes several pieces of information and uses it to predict the growth stage of each field. We’re nothing short of excited to tell you about it!
Categories: CropTalk, 2021
Tags: CropTalk, Farmserver, PFR
One of the first steps to a successful herbicide program is starting clean to allow the pre-emerge herbicide to reach the soil surface. The burndown also allows the opportunity to utilize other “effective” sites of action (SOA) that can’t be used in-season such as Gramoxone® SL 2.0. Spraying early in the spring provides the opportunity to control winter annuals like marestail and emerging summer annuals such as giant ragweed. When evaluating spring burndown options, we must consider if the herbicide has burndown only activity or burndown plus residual activity. Products like Liberty® and Gramoxone SL 2.0 will not have any residual activity but will provide very effective burndown activity. Other burndown products such as Sharpen® or metribuzin will provide residual value depending on the herbicide rate.
Tags: CropTalk, Marestail, PFR, burndown, Dicamba
Feb
Another season of Practical Farm Research (PFR)® data is in the books. Naturally, the first section I check out is the PFR Proven™ section. This section is very important when it comes to making decisions on your operation. For a product or practice to earn the PFR Proven title, it must be tested at multiple locations for a minimum of three years. In each of the three years, it must provide a positive yield gain each and every year and average a positive ROI over the combined years of research.
Tags: CropTalk, PFR, PFR Proven, 2020 pfr
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.
Tags: CropTalk, PFR, PFR Proven, PFR Studies, 2020 pfr
4
Jan
The ever-popular PFR Book that many of you know and utilize on your operation is not the only publication the Practical Farm Research (PFR)® team at Beck’s develops. We also publish a PFR Wheat Book each year!
Tags: CropTalk, Wheat, PFR, PFR Proven
Consumers continue to drive demand for organic crops, and the need to better understand organic systems and products has created an opportunity for PFR testing to help farmers who may be interested in the system. In 2020, Beck's dedicated a section of our Indiana PFR site exclusively to organic testing. In 2021, we plan to do the same at our IA PFR site in hopes to have multi-location testing that focuses solely on organic systems and products.
Tags: CropTalk, PFR, organic, organic transition
2
Nov
2020
Location leads from three of Beck’s six Practical Farm Research (PFR)® sites are eager to share their answers on common questions stemming from the 2020 growing season. Location Lead Caleb Shoemaker provides insight on what’s happening at the Colfax, Iowa, site along with Clayton Stuffl ebeam from the Central Illinois (El Paso) site and Brady Rogers from our Indiana PFR site.
Categories: CropTalk, 2020
Tags: CropTalk, PFR
After the excitement of the new year, one way we can continue the “new” theme is to give you our brand new PFR Proven™ products and practices for corn. We already revealed some information last month about soybeans, so what’s new in the PFR Proven world of corn? Ding, ding, ding! Eighteen products and practices is the answer, so let’s take a look!
Tags: CropTalk, PFR, PFR Proven, pfr proven practices, corn pfr proven, corn closing wheels
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.
8
We're serious about herbicide systems - no matter what soybean technology you plant.
Categories: PFR, #AskPFR
Tags: soybeans, Herbicide, PFR, PFR Report, HERBICIDE RECOMMENDATIONS
3
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.
Tags: CropTalk, PFR, PFR Proven, pfr proven practices, soybean pfr proven, soybean closing wheels
In today’s farm economy, we are always looking for ways to be efficient and profitable, while trying to keep costs in check. This is when the value of our Practical Farm Research (PFR)® data becomes part of your decision making. Since 1964, the Beck family has worked to bring new ideas to your farm to increase productivity and profit. Beck's PFR has developed the PFR Proven™ endorsement to help you decide which products and practices you should try in your operation. This year, we have identified PFR Proven strategies for success based on the key things we have learned in PFR that will lead you to higher soybean yields.
Tags: CropTalk, PFR, PFR Proven, pfr proven practices, soybean pfr proven
13
Dec
2019
Can we be more efficient by banding our nutrients and only doing tillage in the strips? Find out now.
Categories: PFR, PFR Reports
Tags: Agronomy, PFR, PFR Report, tillage, strip-till
Ever wonder how different tillage practices can affect weed management? Find out in this video.
Tags: Agronomy, PFR, PFR Report, tillage, weed resistance, weed management
11
The wild weather of 2019 created challenging conditions, which caused many to implement unconventional practices on some farms. Heavy downpours on tight Midwestern clay soils delayed planting in much of our marketing area, and the shorter planting windows left farmers wondering, “Should I switch my corn hybrids to shorter-season maturities?” This question prompted our Practical Farm Research (PFR)® team at Beck’s to organize a delayed planting hybrid response study.
Tags: Farmserver, PFR, PFR Report, Delayed planting, Precision Farming, hybrid selection
6
As hard as it was, a challenging year like 2019 can still yield applicable insights. The important thing to do is carefully weigh all the factors that can impact your results and examine the data in light of those factors. This past spring, I asked an intern to work a plot and as he began to work the ground I found myself thinking “that may be the worst decision I have made in my 35-year ag career”.
This season will also impact how we think about future decisions as it relates to soil tests and soil testing. I asked my friend Jamie Bultemeier, an agronomist with A&L Great Lakes Laboratories, to share his thoughts on the impact of 2019.
Tags: Cover Crops, Soil Sampling, PFR, soil testing, PFR Report, fall tillage
Oct
Jonathan Perkins, location lead and PFR agronomist at our Effingham, IL site filmed this PFR Report from the field to provide some insight into the late-season SDS observations the SIL PFR team has made over the past few weeks.
Tags: PFR, Sudden Death Syndrome, PFR Report, Water Management, SDS, SIL PFR, late-season observations
In this electrifying video, our team in El Paso tested the Weed Zapper at the CIL Organic Field Day to see if it would be a useful component in an organic weed control program.
Tags: PFR, PFR Report, organic, Weed Zapper, organic farming, weed management
Sep
Soils are anything but monolithic; chemistry, soil type, management history, and, ultimately, yield potential vary acre by acre and inch by inch. Farmers must balance the precision of intensive sampling with the expense of sampling and the practicality of actionable management units.
Categories: CropTalk, 2019
Tags: Soil Sampling, Innovation, Farmserver, PFR, Precision Farming, data, grid sampling, soil data
Aug
In light of the remarkedly wet season that most of the Midwest has experienced, irrigation is likely in the back of most farmers' minds right now. That said, we continue putting irrigation/fertigation systems to the test with our Practical Farm Research (PFR)®. In the case of sub-irrigation, three of our PFR sites have been able to utilize tile drainage systems in certain areas on the sites and backfl ow water through them for a multi-functional drainage plus irrigation system.
Tags: CropTalk, Practical Farm Research, PFR, Water Management, TIle Drainage, Sub-Irrigation, Drip Fertigation