Nebraska On Farm Research – Ag Leader Down Pressure Studies in Corn

University of Nebraska – Lincoln Author

08/31/2020 Added

54 Plays

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In this session Sarah Sivits and Laura Thompson shared preliminary results of a replicated study using Ag Leader Planter Down Pressure impact on plant emergence and yield.
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[00:00:09.840]I'm Don Batie, and I farm,
[00:00:12.050]and I farm northeast of Lexington in Dawson County.
[00:00:16.833](vibrant music)
[00:00:19.459]My great-grandfather, and our great-grandparents,
[00:00:21.690]and two little boys came over
[00:00:23.620]on a steam ship from England in 1873
[00:00:25.740]and homesteaded about a half mile from where we're standing.
[00:00:30.990]Like most farm kids,
[00:00:32.160]I probably was helping dad irrigate when I was six,
[00:00:34.710]but started farming full-time when I graduated
[00:00:38.000]from the University of Nebraska Lincoln in 1980,
[00:00:40.170]so this is my 40th crop full-time.
[00:00:46.400]I'm Barb Batie, and I live at Lexington.
[00:00:52.010]I took a job with the Tri-City Trib at Cozad,
[00:00:56.130]so my very first interview for that tab
[00:00:59.300]was a week after I started work,
[00:01:01.690]and it was with Don and his dad.
[00:01:03.970]It took him three years to ask me out.
[00:01:07.590]The week we got married was in '85.
[00:01:09.440]We got married in '85,
[00:01:11.440]and we were losing money on cattle,
[00:01:13.710]and got hailed out that summer.
[00:01:16.132]So yeah, there's stress now,
[00:01:17.464]but nothing like the stress of the '80s.
[00:01:21.340]My dad was the main operator.
[00:01:23.190]We operated a feed lot.
[00:01:26.530]When he retired, cattle market was kind of bad,
[00:01:30.030]and we had some changes in environmental law,
[00:01:31.970]so we got out of the livestock industry,
[00:01:34.360]and are strictly green farmers now.
[00:01:36.590]We currently raise irrigated corn and soybeans.
[00:01:40.550]Roughly 2/3 corn and 1/3 soybeans is what we wanna run.
[00:01:44.610]Several years ago, I was at an Extension workshop
[00:01:47.560]led by Nathan Mueller,
[00:01:49.110]and so I kind of, that's when I learned about it,
[00:01:51.710]and Nathan had encouraged me to get involved with it,
[00:01:55.290]and so I finally decided to take the plunge.
[00:01:59.777]And Ag Leader had encouraged me to do a study on it.
[00:02:02.260]They wanted to show, and I thought,
[00:02:04.860]if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it
[00:02:06.280]along with the on-farm research, too,
[00:02:08.800]so that it must be published in the university.
[00:02:12.376](vibrant music)
[00:02:16.576]The Downforce Study basically,
[00:02:17.409]is we are looking at three different downforce pressures
[00:02:20.810]on that planting system, for that planter system.
[00:02:23.820]And so basically, the producer
[00:02:25.990]has three different treatments.
[00:02:27.960]They have a manual application, the downforce,
[00:02:30.110]that they selected, and then they have
[00:02:32.230]a medium and a heavy rate of downforce,
[00:02:34.350]and so those last two, the medium and the heavy,
[00:02:37.390]are selected by Ag Leader.
[00:02:39.150]And so the farmer has those three treatments
[00:02:41.290]in the setting, and they are randomly
[00:02:44.130]assigned throughout the trial,
[00:02:46.210]and they are replicated,
[00:02:48.190]so that way we have enough power to show if there's
[00:02:51.124]any statistical differences between the datasets
[00:02:53.679]and the treatments themselves.
[00:02:54.680]I had purchased the system
[00:02:56.160]for a downforce and electric motor drive.
[00:03:00.230]I'd like what I'd seen of the product,
[00:03:02.670]and so we purchased it last fall.
[00:03:05.698]My name is Barry Anderson,
[00:03:06.531]and I serve as a Precision Technology Agronomist
[00:03:09.440]for Ag Leader Technology, based out of Ames, Iowa.
[00:03:11.840]Our Downforce Study,
[00:03:13.090]actually just call it a SureForce Study,
[00:03:14.670]'cause that's what our system's called, the SureForce.
[00:03:17.330]But what we're trying to do, as you know,
[00:03:20.070]there's a lot of different factors
[00:03:22.112]that you find within a field,
[00:03:23.900]from soil type to topography,
[00:03:27.320]to just the tillage practices themselves,
[00:03:30.040]and the amount of residue within a field,
[00:03:32.220]and so as you go from one end of the field to the next,
[00:03:34.440]things can change drastically.
[00:03:36.120]And some farmers that we work with,
[00:03:38.720]they have sand on one end of the field
[00:03:40.220]and they have clay on the other,
[00:03:41.160]but with the SureForce study,
[00:03:42.540]what we're trying to do is,
[00:03:43.373]we're really trying to understand
[00:03:44.870]how our system adapts, how it responds
[00:03:47.190]to those different situations,
[00:03:49.961]in the end, to be able to show the value in our technology
[00:03:53.070]so that we can provide the necessary information
[00:03:55.790]for a grower to be able to make
[00:03:57.520]the correct management decision,
[00:03:59.590]on what's gonna be the best for his farming operation,
[00:04:01.691]and in the end, to be able to be the best
[00:04:04.720]on the return of investment for them.
[00:04:07.170]We went in, the farmer planted it
[00:04:10.230]at those different pressures, and we went in
[00:04:13.430]and we collected early season emergence counts,
[00:04:16.360]as well as span counts at approximately v4 to v6.
[00:04:20.351]And so we get to see if there's any differences
[00:04:23.150]between those treatments as we go through the study.
[00:04:27.030]Ag Leader Technology wrote the original protocols,
[00:04:30.730]and they're the ones who wanted the three different studies
[00:04:33.410]of the manual, medium, and heavy.
[00:04:36.410]And so they did that part,
[00:04:37.970]and then I worked with you on developing
[00:04:41.140]the replicated strips and randomizing it.
[00:04:44.680]The planter did, was extensive modifications.
[00:04:49.100]We spent a good chunk of the winter working on the planter
[00:04:52.615]and all the existing, we had an airbag control before,
[00:04:54.750]so all the existing airbag system had to come off.
[00:04:58.088]Since we added also the electric dry system,
[00:05:00.380]we got rid of all the chains and SEED leaders,
[00:05:03.390]all those had to come out.
[00:05:05.210]And then we replaced that with the hydraulic lines.
[00:05:10.030]There's a lot more wires and some generators,
[00:05:12.090]there's a lot of things we had to add.
[00:05:14.460]But we did it all ourselves, and it's not hard,
[00:05:16.650]it just took a little time.
[00:05:18.480]After plans started to emerge,
[00:05:20.090]we took some early season emergence counts,
[00:05:22.473]and so we went out and,
[00:05:23.813]there's a couple different ways you can do it.
[00:05:25.740]A lot of the times in emergence counts,
[00:05:27.340]people like to put color-coded flags,
[00:05:29.630]'cause they're easy to see.
[00:05:31.270]For the economic setup between the two studies,
[00:05:33.760]I decided to take Popsicle sticks and spray paint them.
[00:05:36.970]So each day we'd go out into each of these plots
[00:05:40.750]that were marked off,
[00:05:42.190]and we would put a Popsicle stick
[00:05:44.645]next to the plants that had emerged.
[00:05:46.510]So, being that they're color-coded, for example,
[00:05:48.920]if we had a green Popsicle stick,
[00:05:51.018]that all came out on day one.
[00:05:53.180]I would put a blue Popsicle stick on day two,
[00:05:55.740]a yellow one one day three, et cetera,
[00:05:57.750]so that way we could see trends in the data.
[00:06:00.180]And so that has been collected.
[00:06:03.090]And then we also came out at v4 to v6
[00:06:05.500]and we took early seasons stand counts,
[00:06:07.070]and we also got to see how many plants were behind,
[00:06:10.630]so that could be caused by the treatments themselves.
[00:06:14.410]And from there we've just made sure
[00:06:17.180]that things look good, everything's flagged,
[00:06:19.260]that way we can find it later on in the growing season.
[00:06:22.409]Well it was interesting,
[00:06:23.510]just in watching it while we were planting.
[00:06:26.630]The manuals, we were adding 100 pounds per row,
[00:06:31.730]and then the medium setting,
[00:06:35.105]it wanted 100 pounds of force on the gauge wheels,
[00:06:37.320]and so most of the time,
[00:06:39.020]'cause I have row unit boxes,
[00:06:40.850]and most of the time there actually was lifting on the unit,
[00:06:44.440]and so there's quite a bit of difference,
[00:06:47.970]and our ground was strip tilled prior to planting,
[00:06:52.020]and so it was at a soft seed growth.
[00:06:53.710]It did not need the pressure.
[00:06:55.990]And I think that was a kind of revelation,
[00:06:57.983]just how little extra pressure we needed on our planter
[00:07:01.350]to do that.
[00:07:03.026]So I guess we'll see how it turns out,
[00:07:04.440]but yeah we might replicate the trial next year.
[00:07:07.650]So the data has shown this far,
[00:07:09.230]at least for the Downforce Study,
[00:07:11.110]that when we look at the emergence,
[00:07:13.300]everything was pretty even across the treatments.
[00:07:15.740]There wasn't a huge amount of variability,
[00:07:18.160]and we saw a very similar trend
[00:07:20.160]for the early season stand counts.
[00:07:21.860]Everything looked nice and uniform.
[00:07:23.730]The producer planted at approximately 34,000 seeds per acre,
[00:07:28.570]and we had values that were very, very similar to that,
[00:07:32.180]so across the board everything looks very good.
[00:07:35.138](vibrant music)
[00:07:39.570]The travel speed study was completely
[00:07:42.080]at the suggestion of Ag Leader.
[00:07:43.670]I'm for the first time yeah, I was a little bit shocked.
[00:07:47.160]I did not know I was gonna be doing that as well.
[00:07:49.440]Yeah, so we're doing a speed study,
[00:07:50.920]how using our SureDrive system,
[00:07:53.490]and really what our SureDrive is,
[00:07:55.860]it's a motor that fits onto the metering unit itself
[00:07:58.400]on the planter,
[00:07:59.233]so we can adapt to a lot of different
[00:08:01.040]meter systems that are out there.
[00:08:03.270]But what we're trying to do is,
[00:08:04.240]we're just trying to understand,
[00:08:05.770]even with the SureDrive without having to go
[00:08:07.440]to a high speed planter,
[00:08:08.970]how, with our SureDrive, you can actually increase speed.
[00:08:11.870]So if you're currently planting at five miles an hour
[00:08:14.140]and you go to seven miles an hour,
[00:08:16.130]is that going to allow you to still be able
[00:08:17.810]to maintain the singulation
[00:08:19.070]the spacing that you need within the field?
[00:08:21.780]So even going from five to seven,
[00:08:23.730]you're probably increasing about 33% or so in speed.
[00:08:27.550]If we look at the travel speed study,
[00:08:30.310]very similar in the fact that we are
[00:08:31.880]also using Downforce pressure on that planting system,
[00:08:35.220]however, it's only at one application rate,
[00:08:39.130]and the treatments instead,
[00:08:40.470]is looking at planting at five to seven,
[00:08:42.480]and 10 miles per hour.
[00:08:44.350]The thing of it is,
[00:08:45.183]it boils down to efficiencies come springtime,
[00:08:48.240]'cause in the spring, you have just so much time
[00:08:51.019]to do your footwork, and that includes everything,
[00:08:55.070]so if you have tills to do,
[00:08:56.270]if you have fertilizing to do, planting to do,
[00:08:59.500]all those things, you only have so many days
[00:09:01.460]within that window, and if we can speed the planter up,
[00:09:05.160]hopefully that will maybe free some other days up there
[00:09:07.566]that'll allow you to do something else
[00:09:09.260]that you need to get done, too.
[00:09:10.650]And with that being said, though,
[00:09:11.730]we want to make sure that if we are
[00:09:13.801]making changes in our equipment,
[00:09:15.468]or in the way that we are planting,
[00:09:16.804]we wanna make sure that we are efficient.
[00:09:18.670]And so we could plant faster,
[00:09:20.850]but we wanna make sure that we have good planting space,
[00:09:23.100]we have the proper seed depth,
[00:09:25.600]allowing the plants to come up at good emergence,
[00:09:28.480]and hence good stand counts,
[00:09:30.190]and giving them a good opportunity
[00:09:31.530]throughout the growing season.
[00:09:32.960]This is not a high speed planter,
[00:09:34.350]it is a normal stock planter,
[00:09:36.290]only addition was we added the electric motor
[00:09:38.730]instead of the chain guard.
[00:09:40.376]And so, it was again, three strips,
[00:09:44.080]and we did five replication of this in the field,
[00:09:47.071]of what we could fit in.
[00:09:47.950]10 mile an hour is too, way fast.
[00:09:50.457]My first one, my guidance system
[00:09:52.450]was not cued in very well, and so at 10 miles an hour
[00:09:56.010]it wasn't steering well,
[00:09:57.732]so I had to actually steer it by hand which,
[00:09:59.000]I haven't done that in a long time.
[00:10:01.150]And definitely was, the 10 mile an hour,
[00:10:04.550]was beyond the capacity of the planter.
[00:10:07.590]I was getting poor singulation.
[00:10:10.945]Easily could see it from the planter,
[00:10:13.140]and as soon as we started to see an emergence,
[00:10:15.000]it was definitely proved again on emergence.
[00:10:17.120]On this particular study, though,
[00:10:18.690]we did see some variability within that data and the trends.
[00:10:23.086]Five and seven look really pretty good at those speeds.
[00:10:26.580]We saw a lot more variability at 10 miles per hour.
[00:10:29.620]And so within that, we could see that we had some skips,
[00:10:32.830]we had some plots where plants
[00:10:34.910]were right next to each other,
[00:10:36.220]so the seeds are very, very close to one another.
[00:10:38.520]I even found some instances
[00:10:40.160]where there was seed on top of the soil surface,
[00:10:42.640]and so emergence was just very spotty
[00:10:44.860]and took a little bit longer in diving across the field,
[00:10:47.820]and when we took stand counts across the field,
[00:10:50.300]you could tell in those plots
[00:10:51.921]there was a lot more variability.
[00:10:54.660]And Ag Leader expected it to be too fast.
[00:10:57.260]They told us that they wanted to have one
[00:10:58.890]beyond the capability just to show that there is a limit.
[00:11:02.100]You just can't just keep speeding up.
[00:11:04.530]With these two studies,
[00:11:06.095]it was really important to take early season data
[00:11:07.670]because it was looking at planter,
[00:11:09.730]and the equipment, and how that would impact
[00:11:11.990]the plants in the beginning of the year.
[00:11:14.170]But mother nature has a mind of its own,
[00:11:16.270]and so we never know what we're gonna get.
[00:11:18.080]It might get hailed, it might get some green snap,
[00:11:20.450]some wind damage, whatever the case may be,
[00:11:23.060]and so I had wanted to take
[00:11:25.460]some late season stand counts on there,
[00:11:27.210]so there are flags throughout the field
[00:11:29.724]on the exact same plots,
[00:11:31.600]so that way I can come back later on in the growing season
[00:11:34.170]and find them, and count them again.
[00:11:35.960]And then we will collect yield data
[00:11:37.840]at the end of the growing season,
[00:11:39.380]to make sure if we can see
[00:11:40.840]any statistical differences there,
[00:11:43.230]'cause usually that's what the farmers are interested in
[00:11:45.470]is their bottom line, is the yield.
[00:11:47.998]This Extension service has been awesome,
[00:11:50.670]and in particular, you sir.
[00:11:52.720]I'd highly encourage farmers to do
[00:11:54.750]long term research of some type.
[00:11:57.200]Either do something you've thought about.
[00:12:00.530]Come up with a wild, crazy idea and try it.
[00:12:02.680]You never know.
[00:12:03.945](birds chirping)
[00:12:05.880]I read an article that most large corporations
[00:12:09.330]devote one to two percent
[00:12:12.460]of their gross revenues to research,
[00:12:15.760]and maybe as much as 10%,
[00:12:18.000]and I think farmers ought to develop
[00:12:20.510]one, two, five percent of your acres to research
[00:12:23.690]on your own farm, because what works in Lincoln
[00:12:27.000]may or may not work in Lexington,
[00:12:29.280]may or may not work in Scotts Bluff.
[00:12:31.820]With the help of the Extension personnel,
[00:12:34.520]it makes it so much easier,
[00:12:36.068]and they'll do all the nitty gritty
[00:12:39.030]and push the numbers for you,
[00:12:40.810]and all you have to do is decide
[00:12:43.930]what it is you wanna research,
[00:12:45.877]and then get in touch with your Extension staff,
[00:12:50.250]and they'll make it happen.
[00:12:52.120]The farmer comes, they have an idea,
[00:12:54.150]you sit down with them or you talk it over with them
[00:12:57.070]on the phone, and just kinda discuss,
[00:12:59.277]"What are your overall goals for this study in mind,"
[00:13:02.920]and once you kinda have that,
[00:13:04.490]you can go and decide what you wanna do from there.
[00:13:07.952]And usually farmers wanna know yield,
[00:13:10.610]they wanna know the economic to turn,
[00:13:13.270]but it really depends, like with organic producers,
[00:13:15.690]they wanna look at weed control.
[00:13:18.409]I've worked with some producers using biologicals,
[00:13:20.420]and they wanna look at microbial communities,
[00:13:22.740]or root growth and development,
[00:13:24.280]so you have to take root digs.
[00:13:26.040]So you kind figure out what their goals are,
[00:13:28.030]what products they wanna use,
[00:13:29.560]what equipment they wanna use and what treatments,
[00:13:32.400]and then from there you can kinda design it.
[00:13:34.610]You set up a treatment plot or, excuse me, a trial,
[00:13:38.950]that has randomized and replicated plots.
[00:13:42.520]So, what we mean by that is,
[00:13:44.430]we don't wanna put all of our eggs into one basket.
[00:13:47.240]We don't wanna put all of treatment A
[00:13:48.780]on one side of the field,
[00:13:50.789]and treatment B on the other side of the field,
[00:13:52.070]'cause fields are variable.
[00:13:54.190]They have different soil textures.
[00:13:55.530]They might have low spots,
[00:13:56.560]they might have some disease pressure
[00:13:58.150]in one spot of the field,
[00:13:59.480]or they could get hailed out,
[00:14:01.360]whatever the case may be.
[00:14:03.040]And so we wanna make sure that we have
[00:14:06.000]enough randomization so there's not a lot of bias
[00:14:09.030]with those treatments, if at all,
[00:14:11.290]and then we wanna make sure we have
[00:14:12.610]plenty of replication,
[00:14:13.840]at least three replications in the treatment,
[00:14:16.500]so that way we can run good statistics on it, on the data.
[00:14:20.210]However, usually with my producers,
[00:14:22.610]I encourage them to plant four to six,
[00:14:24.720]or five to seven applications,
[00:14:26.330]because you might have a planting error.
[00:14:28.790]You might have part of the field that gets hailed out.
[00:14:31.200]You might have who knows what
[00:14:32.980]come up there in the growing season,
[00:14:34.280]so we have to remove that particular rep.
[00:14:37.230]So, so long as we have enough data
[00:14:39.360]at the end of the growing season, enough reps,
[00:14:41.320]that we can show that we have enough power in that data
[00:14:44.290]when we run statistics to show
[00:14:45.650]if there are any differences between treatments.
[00:14:48.381](pleasant music)
[00:14:52.020]I'm planning on farming another six, seven years,
[00:14:56.650]and then I wanna be done.
[00:14:58.870]The grows definitely will have some part
[00:15:01.970]how that will look for the next five years,
[00:15:05.050]we're not sure.
[00:15:07.100]Every generation has changed the farm to fit the times,
[00:15:09.580]and so they need to be, and they are,
[00:15:11.873]they're looking at different options
[00:15:13.940]and ways to move in the future.

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Nebraska On Farm Research – Ag Leader Down Pressure Studies in Corn

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