By Darren Hefty

That’s right.  Soybeans could be your high-dollar crop.  With chances to market beans around $15 per bushel and many growers seeing 60 bushel yields and even higher over the last few years, soybeans have the potential to be a very high-dollar crop for your farm.  Here are some of the things we’re doing to grow bigger yields, as well as some of the newer things in soybean genetics that you should try in 2013.

Brian and I are very fortunate to be able to work with many of the top soybean growers in the U.S.  One thing nearly all of them have in common is a focus on feeding their crops.  Forget about the two-year or three-year fertilizer plan.  On most farms, we find there is insufficient soil fertility to raise a great soybean crop.  Focus on feeding your soybean crop this year.

For example, do you realize how much Phosphorus and Potassium a soybean crop removes from the soil?  If you’re shooting for 60 bushel soybeans, the grain alone removes 48 pounds of Phosphate and 84 pounds of K2O Potassium.  Plus the stover takes up 20 pounds of Phosphate and 50 pounds of K2O Potassium.  Using MAP (11-52-0), it would take 130 pounds of product to put out that much Phosphate.  Using Potash (0-0-60) it would take 225 pounds of product to apply that much K2O Potassium.  You may have a little carryover fertility from your last crop, but chances are you don’t have that much.

Plus, you need all the other essential nutrients, including micronutrients.  Start planning right now on how to get those nutrients applied so you don’t get to next spring and still not have a way to get the fertilizer out there.

Other things that made a big difference for our soybeans again this year include:

  1. Complete seed treatment with fungicide and insecticide
  2. Biological products – e.g. QuickRoots
  3. Inoculant
  4. Using 2 or more residual herbicides
  5. Spraying early for insects
  6. Using a foliar fungicide

Finally, there are some exciting new things in the soybean seed business that could make you some money.

  • Better Phytophthora Root Rot (PRR) Control – The new Rps 3A gene has been out for a couple seasons.  You may not have tried it, as it hasn’t yet been bred into all maturity zones.  It’s in a few more zones this year, and the response has been fantastic.  Sure, most PRR genes can do a decent job on early season Phytophthora, but the mid-season outbreaks happen well after seed treatments have worn off.  Rps 3A beans have been dominating plots that are wet or on heavier ground.  Many of the newer varieties in our Hefty Brand Soybean lineup for 2013 have Rps 3A, which makes them real performers in tough conditions.  The only problem is those will probably be the first varieties to sell out.
  • Improved Soybean Cyst Nematode (SCN) Control – SCN-resistant beans are not new, but now we have a couple beans with the Peking gene hitting the market, rather than the Fayette gene that’s in 95% of the SCN-resistant beans in the country.  Peking has always been good at SCN protection, but now it’s in some genetics that yield well, too.
  • Big yield gains in LibertyLink genetics – LibertyLink soybeans offer a great herbicide alternative if you have some Roundup-resistant weeds.  The seed production fields that were planted this year have genetics with some of the biggest one-year yield gains over previous releases that I’ve ever seen.  Your seed for 2013 will have tremendous yield potential, better than ever by a significant margin.  We expect LibertyLink soybean demand to be up quite a bit from last year, so order early if you want to get the hot new numbers.

Get excited about your new high-dollar crop this year, soybeans!