With corn prices surging, the team at Wyffels Hybrids is helping farmers capture every bushel.
Wyffels Hybrids recently published a video that provides advice to farmers on how to choose the right planting rate this growing season. Wyffels Agronomy Manager Eric Wilson tells the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network that his teams conducts a planting rate study every year.
?We?re big on making sure we get the right planting rate,? Wilson said. ?I?m going to speak very generally because specific hybrids have specific recommendations on planting rates, but what we?ve found is there?s an absolute yield benefit to increasing populations. We?ve known that for a while. We promote increasing populations. That?s where a lot of our yield gains over the last few decades have come from.?
Wilson says the planting rate topic is much more talked about this growing season with the higher prices in the corn market.
?We?re staring down the face of $5 corn,? Wilson said. ?That gives our customers opportunities and we want to help them capture every bushel that they can get this year because that is more money in their pocket. An easy way to do that or set the stage for the growing season is to get your populations up at that optimum rate for return on investment. If we were to compare the numbers, traditionally we use $3.50 corn to calculate that ROI. We?ve now put in $5 corn and that has actually raised the recommended optimum planting rate by about 1000 plants. It?s actually about 900 plants per acre.?
For more tips on how to choose the right planting rate, Wilson and Dr. Brent Tharp from Wyffels Hybrids speak more on the topic in their recent ?Corn Convos? video series on YouTube.
