By Darren Hefty
I look forward to the Ag PhD Field Day on our farm (this year’s event is Thursday, July 30) every summer for a ton of reasons. In 2014, one of the things I was most interested in was to share ideas with some of the nation’s top-yielding farmers. Some of the best advice I got that day was from the new world-record yielding corn grower, Randy Dowdy, who just topped 500 bushels/acre! He and a number of other top growers from around the country walked several of our fields and told me our planter just wasn’t doing a good enough job. The consistency of our depth placement wasn’t up to his standards. The resulting unevenness in emergence cost us yield. The result is a major overhaul on our planter with Precision Planting parts.
The other big takeaway came from two conversations: one with David Hula and one with a Case IH mechanic from out of this area. They both said that we were being a little too stingy on replacing parts. Basically, our standard for when to replace wearable discs, etc. was a little less than theirs. When you think about what a difference the performance of the planter makes on your profitability, it makes sense to invest a bit more in replacing parts on the early side to maintain excellent and consistent performance.
I know the same holds true for the drill. Phil Needham is a fantastic wheat consultant who works with growers across the country. His program starts by educating you about the proper way to set up your drill to plant wheat as well as possible.
The message here is to spend your valuable time this winter making sure the most important piece of equipment on the farm, your planter or drill, is well-maintained and prepared to plant your seed as near to perfect as possible. It makes a huge difference on the bottom line.