By DAVE BLOWER JR.
Farm World Editor

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In an effort to bring its readers the best possible and most useful information, Farm World has partnered with Farmer’s Independent Research of Seed Technologies (FIRST) to publish the results of their testing.

Farm World is the exclusive publisher of FIRST’s harvest reports from 60 corn sites and 28 soybean test plots from across Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. Nearly 80 seed companies have agreed to have their hybrids tested by FIRST (see related list on page 2).
With rising input costs and volatile commodity markets, many growers need to get the most of their acreage, explained Kevin Coey, FIRST director. He believes the test results from FIRST will help farmers make wiser planting decisions in the spring.

“Field performance of today’s corn and soybean seed products will determine the success of grain farms like never before,” Coey said. “This is because dollars spent producing and dollars received harvesting bushels have never been higher.”

To ensure the reports are as timely as possible, each site report will be published in Farm World as soon as they are completed. The site reports will start appearing in the Oct. 8 issue of the newspaper and continue through to the end of December. The FIRST seed test results will also be available at www.farmworldonline.com
“We’re delighted with this new partnership,” said FIRST manager Rich Schleuning. “Publishing the site reports as soon as they are completed rather than waiting until the end of the year and publishing them all at the same time will draw more attention to the reports and to what we’re doing. We’re very excited to be working with Farm World.”

Richard Lewis, Publisher of Farm World added, “We, too, are very excited to be publishing FIRST’s harvest reports. Farmers are interested in what other growers are yielding with other hybrids, and so our series of FIRST seed trial results will be one of the most popular items in the newspaper.”

A history

Coey started FIRST in 1997. He planted 12 corn sites in Illinois, tested 64 hybrids and had 14 seed corn companies as sponsors.
Since that time the program has expanded to include corn and soybean testing. Sites are planted in South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and the DelMarva region in Delaware and Maryland.
FIRST is an association of farmers organized to find newly developed and trait-added seed corn and soybean products that improve their grain operations.

Farmer members assist in the selection of the test site, coordinate field operations in the spring and provide all of the inputs except the seed.

Companies willing to sponsor the research decide which products to test and where to test them.

Only a select group of hybrids are tested. Hybrids are tested as a set at several sites and are tested equally and in three replications at each site.

Many of the processes of testing the hybrids have changed since 1997.

What hasn’t changed are:

•The significant yield and agronomic differences between commercially available seed products

•The need for seed buyers and sellers to find trustworthy information to base their seed selections and recommendations
“Corn and soybean seed tests conducted by FIRST have served as an important source for this kind of information for 12 years now,” Coey explained. “The seed tests are the work of Seed Test Managers who partner with hundreds of proven grain producers (farm members) across the Great Plains, Corn Belt and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.

“These relationships are based solely on generating quality data (with technical expertise and experimental controls supplied by the managers) and meaningful data (representing the management of soils, tillage, fertility, crop protection etc. as practiced by the members).”

The website

For readers who are interested in researching the test plot results on a daily basis, go to www.farmworldonline.com and look for a link to the FIRST website. Veteran visitors to www.firstseedtests.com will see some changes.

FIRST’s new website allows visitors to quickly find the report they want and to click directly on the report name rather than going to an interior page.

Visitors need to hover their pointer over the menu item to watch the sub-menus appear. Available reports will appear in bold-face type. Click on it and the report will open. Reports will be loaded within 24 hours of their delivery to FIRST’s web team, so watch for reports to quickly change from the gray-type listing to the bold text signifying that it’s loaded for viewing.