As combines roll, the rush to complete harvest can overcome any thoughts of planning for the next season. Yet, you’re already likely looking at new hybrids and varieties, and other steps to target success for 2026.
“It’s a time to reflect,” says Thomas Butts, Extension weed specialist at Purdue University. Take weed control. He says farmers are now using complex tank-mixes and adjuvants, pushing more “strange things” through nozzles. Evaluating the results matters.
From the combine cab, it’s often possible to see here a herbicide failed or a fungicide succeeded. Butts says farmers have more data available with advanced tech: “There is more in-depth, higher-level technology available. We’re using drone imagery and dabbling in satellite imagery to assess escapes.”
Another valuable tool is historical information. Data from the last few years reveals problem areas in fields. For better weed control, Butts suggests either improving the placement of residuals or considering higher application rates based on more detailed soil sampling.
Evaluating tech’s effectiveness
When poring over field data to evaluate weed control, Butts says it makes more sense to explore areas where weed pressure is higher. New sense-and-act sprayer tools now create weed maps of areas where nozzles sprayed or didn’t based on visual images at application.
“You might want to look at a clue as to why there is more weed pressure in one area,” Butts says. “We need to do better with soil sampling in that [high-weed] area to learn about soil texture changes, organic matter changes, and determine what’s happening.”
When evaluating those weed issues, farmers should also preserve tools they have. “We’re starting to see — as weed scientists — Enlist break,” says Shawn Conley. “The key is to protect that technology.”
Conley, professor of weed science at the University of Wisconsin, says it’s important to evaluate what didn’t die in the field. “What did or didn’t work, and why,” he says.
Data collected in-season can be a valuable tool for enhancing crop scouting, too. “Drone imagery using multispectral cameras can tell some things,” he says. “When it comes to weeds, it could tell us weed hot spots or show herbicide injury. But drone imagery is not 100% there yet, as it is still difficult to identify individual species. But if I fly a 200-acre field in a handful of minutes, I can target scouting to see those problem areas.”
Conley says farmers have so much information available that artificial intelligence tools will soon come into play just to make sense of the data. “We’re working with farmers to crowdsource some of that data to try to get answers to crop production questions,” he says.
Sharing data helps
Conley notes his university has data from several thousand farmers across the country, which is kept anonymous. This pooled data, however, can become a grander decision-making tool. For example, data showed “later-planted soybeans will have a bigger yield response to foliar fungicides in the I-states,” he says.
While early-planted soybeans show higher yields, later-planted beans still make sense with the help of fungicides. “The kind of information we’ve nuanced out of the data has not been done before,” he says. “If you have enough data points, you can learn these kinds of return-on-investment approaches.”
Conley says better understanding data can improve your results, by changing your planting schedule based on which fields offer higher returns. “Knowing which fields will pay off can help prioritize planting,” he says.
Farm data has evolved from 1990s yield maps to comprehensive metrics today, helping make better decisions that improve your operation’s profitability.