Harvest is wrapping up in most of our marketing area, which means it's time to start planning for next season. As we evaluate our 2020 crop, we should be thinking about nutrient management options to replace or build soil fertility. One factor that farmers often overlook when calculating fertility needs is the value in crop residue.

Farmers deal with so much out of their control – weather extremes, commodity prices, land values. With these factors in play, stress is not hard to fi nd on a farm. But that does not mean that farmers should have to bottle up their stress and anxiety until it starts wearing on their physical, mental, and emotional health.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This quote can be applied to weed management today. Preventing weeds from emerging protects yield. University data indicates that growers will sacrifice 2.5% of their final yield for every leaf stage that a postemerge application is delayed. When it comes to post-emerge applications, the best weed to control is a weed that never emerged.

Agronomists get many calls during a typical growing season when things aren't going right in corn and soybean fi elds in the geographies that we cover. Most of the time, problems are caused by common diseases or insects. Sometimes, though, we receive calls about damage to plants that is caused by uncommon pests.

We've got a whole new focus on organic research in PFR!

Join Clayton Stufflebeam, Central IL Practical Farm Research (PFR) Location Lead, highlights the preharvest findings on Prescription Tillage Technology’s STP Disc Openers.

What is the ideal placement for nitrogen starter fertilizer?

It's too good to be true. It sounds like a gimmick.

Many farmers have these sentiments when they first hear about Beck’s Commitment Rewards program, but how do those feelings change as they begin to take advantage of the program?

Corn rootworm tends to be a measurable issue every year, but 2020 corn rootworm incident reports have been higher than normal. Although farmers across Beck’s marketing area experienced higher rootworm populations, northern Iowa has the most documented reports. Iowa Field Agronomists NATE MAYER AND JON CASPERS have been in the trenches, evaluating corn rootworm damage, trait integrity, and measuring beetle populations to provide proactive recommendations for 2021 success.

“Come, let us go down and there confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. Genesis 11:7-9