In a year when margins are tighter than treatment on seed, every input decision carries more weight. Farmers are being asked to squeeze more certainty out of the same acres, yet the list of products promising a return keeps growing.
With so much riding on every dollar, the question becomes unavoidable: How do you know which inputs actually pay off?
Last year’s results can offer clues, but they’re never the whole story. Weather shifts, pest pressure changes and new products enter the market, reshuffling the deck each season. That’s why on-farm trials matter. They give farmers real numbers from their own fields.
Start testing now
Even if you didn’t start testing new inputs last year, the smartest move you can make now is to begin. The sooner you put trials in the ground, the sooner you start replacing guesswork with data that pays.
And instead of relying on sales pitches, farmers get evidence rooted in their own soils and management.
Beyond data
It’s not that Blue Mound, Ill., farmer Jeff Brown doesn’t trust sales representatives — after all, he once was one — but he needs to go beyond plot data.
“We’ve got to make it work across thousands of acres,” Brown said.
In lieu of that, Aaron Gingerich of Lovington, Ill., suggests listening closely to the pitch, especially on new products or alternative methods.
“You can tell really quick whether they’re science-based,” he said.
Regardless of your on-farm experience with an input, Annette Puvaloski with Wilbur-Ellis recommends staying flexible.
“You have to analyze it in the field and be willing to change the plan you had earlier,” Puvaloski said. “It’s not a 55-mile-per-hour drive-by. Get out there and walk those fields. There are so many things that impact that choice that we can’t predict.”
Predict the unpredictable
The unpredictability that comes with weather, insects and disease is the reason to evaluate field history and commit to a field-by-field risk management plan. Farmers who cut those variable costs are the ones who steal sleep from BASF’s Bryan Perry.
“You can’t risk cutting the wrong variable that could take 20 to 30 bushels an acre out of the equation,” Perry said.
Puvaloski agrees. “Start your management plans at the beginning and don’t try to chase problems later,” she said.
And whether you discover a product worked well or failed fabulously, Gingerich said to let the company know, even if the latter is a hard conversation.
Gingerich recently told a representative that none of the three products he trialed made economic sense. That doesn’t mean he wrote off the company.
“If he comes back, I’ll know he’s willing to undergo that kind of scrutiny,” Gingerich said.