By EMMA HOPKINS

Indiana Correspondent

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Farming has never been a financially easy profession; recently, that is especially true with stagnant grain market prices and few real options to avoid losing money.

That’s why crop extension specialists spoke to producers on reducing production costs at Purdue University’s Top Farmer Conference this month. Hosted by Purdue’s Center for Commercial Agriculture, it featured several economists and focused on farm economic trends and how producers can manage their finances more carefully.

Corn specialist Bob Nielson, soybean specialist Shaun Casteel and weed management specialist Bill Johnson all spoke on how to reduce production costs in their respective areas.

Nielson suggested producers spend more time budgeting out their production costs by studying yield data. “Max yields on most of our hybrids and most of our soils in the state of Indiana occur at a harvest population ranging from 28,000 to 35,000 plants per acre,” he said. “And that’s based on 67 field trials in 2016.

“That may be lower than what some of you are using now, or lower than what you’re being advised to do by your crop consultants. Even if you just stick within that range and just go for, on the low end at 28,000, you’re saving a lot of money.”

Using what Nielson called “old-fashioned” advice, he said producers should concern themselves with choosing the right hybrid seeds to plant. He said selecting hybrids which are more tolerant to stress will most likely fare better in the modern Midwest climate.

“We’re looking at a period of extreme climatic variability, and we don’t know what kind of weather conditions we’re going to have next year, so not only do you need a hybrid with great genetic potential, but you want to find a hybrid that will tolerate almost anything that it experiences in the unpredictable growing season in this coming year,” he said.

“One way to do that is to look at performance of varieties across the wide range of weather conditions. We do that by getting our hands on a lot of varieties in our testing plots and trying to find hybrids that, no matter where they’re grown in a geographic location, they always seem to be near the top.”

Other suggestions Nielson offered included improving tile or surface drainage, minimizing compaction and nitrogen loss opportunities, conserving soil moisture, minimizing erosion, adopting spatially intensive soil sampling, considering row starter fertilizer and selecting for hybrid disease resistance.

Casteel said seed variety selection and seed rate is important, along with low-cost management of pests and using caution when deciding what your crop needs.

“We’ve got a lot of our nematodes populations that are breaking out,” he explained. “As far as weeds, let’s manage those right away; don’t let them get out of hand.

“I daresay there (are) many of you in this room who don’t need an insecticide seed treatment for soybeans. I’ve never seen it play out. So if you’re looking at ways to reduce costs, there’s one right there.”

Casteel also explained how planting soybeans late can cause major losses.

“Late April-early May is a general sweet spot for planting. I’ve got varieties and trials where, on the first week of May, we’re losing 3/10ths to a half-bushel. I’ve got some sites in southern Indiana that we have noticed for a few years that it’s upwards of 8/10ths of a bushel per acre per day.”

Long-term weeds

Johnson said low-cost weed control is obtainable, if producers think long-term about their fields instead of looking at them year-to-year.

“From the perspective of weed control, since we have weeds that will produce seeds and drop that seed, it will be a problem of future years,” he said. “We need to think about weed management not only in the current year, but what’s going to happen in future years.”

Driver weeds such as marestail, giant ragweed, waterhemp and palmer amaranth are ones Johnson said must be eliminated as completely as possible to avoid further resistance in those weeds – especially when it comes to waterhemp.

“Waterhemp has blown up on us the last couple of years,” he noted. “it’s resistant to glyphosate and it’s driving the adoption of Xtend and Liberty brand herbicides in particular. Usually if we do a good job with our driver weeds, we don’t have problems with our other weeds because the key is to know what those other weeds are.”

Johnson said even weeds that are not currently resistant to herbicides should be watched closely, because they may develop marginal control that could turn into resistance eventually. One way to avoid growing weeds is to use pre- and post-emergent herbicides.

“Pre-emerge herbicides rarely give you a 100 percent weed control,” Johnson said. “But what they do is they provide that window and reduce the weed population enough to make your post-emergent herbicides work a lot better, and minimize early-session weed competition.”

Though it requires a good amount of study to design a weed management plan, especially when a producer has many acres to consider, Johnson maintains it is one of the best ways to reduce production costs.

“The big key here is that you really can’t be lazy when you think about it – which weeds are problematic and which are drivers in each field – you’ve got to design the program to get those driver weeds,” he pointed out.

“Proactive management is always better than reactive management, because with reactive management you’re going to suffer rather severe yield losses in one year, plus you’ve put all of these weeds in the seed bank that you’ll have to manage for decades after that. One year of seeding can be a lifetime of weeding.”

The specialists wrapped up with the joint message that reducing production costs is possible if producers are willing to pay a little extra attention to specific management aspects.

“Let’s be intentional about it,” Casteel said. “Let’s understand exactly what’s going on, and make decisions that make the most sense.”