High yields start with low-hanging fruits

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Kip Cullers calls them "low-hanging fruits." Easy-to-implement, low cost management practices and inputs that yield a high return. Farmers have their own systems, and Cullers says being making minor changes to the system can add up to a sum of high returns in yield.

Cullers, who grows corn and soybeans near the southwest Missouri town of Purdy, is known for holding the world record soybean yield at 160.6 bushels per acre. Reaching these high-end yields starts by picking these low-hanging fruits, he told growers at a Conklin AgroVantage Pro Grower day in Hastings in May. "Low-hanging fruits are no-brainers, the easy things everyone should be doing," he says. "You don't have to reach very high to get them."

Green and growing
One of these low-hanging fruits that helps keep fields uniform, green, and growing throughout the season is foliar feeding, Cullers adds. This includes micronutrients like boron and sulfur, which Cullers says most growers are deficient in due to reductions in factory emissions, and manganese and iron – which, while debated, some say get tied up when using glyphosate, resulting in yellow flash in soybeans.

While the economic advantage of micronutrients has been debated, Todd Hoffman, who raises corn and soybeans near Hastings, says they are economical when applied in the right amounts at the right time – usually mixed in with glyphosate at V3 to V5 in corn and V4 to R1 in soybeans. "You can actually improve your yields by putting on less than you think by foliar feeding at the right time," Hoffman says. "Every time you go out and spray glyphosate, you should probably put a pint of manganese in your sprayer."

Jerry Cox, 24-time winner of the National Corn Growers Association yield contest, says it's important to get a soil test to know what micronutrients are needed, followed with a tissue test to ensure they're used by the plant.