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Streamline Application with the Ag Leader DirectCommand System

Category: Precision Ag
Published on May 17, 2016
Written by Jason Smith
With the 2016 planting season wrapping up here in Western Illinois, now is the perfect time to check for uneven emergence in our corn. This can help with making future planter decisions concerning hydraulic downforce. As we scout our fields after planting, we start switching our focus to application. Waste is the number one threat to your bottom line. In application, this is especially true. Wasted time, energy and inputs can put stress on that bottom line. With the Ag Leader DirectCommand system, we can streamline that process to be as efficient and profitable as possible.

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Fungicide Application Tips for 2016

Category: Ag Chemicals
Published on May 17, 2016
Written by Brent Schmitz
For the most part, corn planting is finished in West-Central Illinois, Eastern Iowa and Northeastern Missouri. Now it’s time to think about protecting that investment with fungicide applications. As I’m writing this, corn for October delivery is $3.52 to the river. That certainly makes finances tight, and we must evaluate the economics of everything we do more closely. It’s critical to do everything possible to increase per acre profit. Fungicide is one product that you can use to increase that per acre profit with very little effort.

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Corn Crop 2016: Advice from John Viertel

Category: Ag Chemicals
Published on May 01, 2016
Written by John Viertel
WOW! In all my years of traveling the state of Missouri during the month of April, I don’t think that I have ever seen the corn crop go in the ground faster or under more ideal conditions than it did this year! After scouting some fields on April 28, the newly emerged plants look excellent. One field was almost in the V-2 stage, and there are probably some fields in Missouri that are further along than that. Emergence and population were virtually perfect. Weed control – excellent!

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Crop Residue: Understanding the Basics from Planting to Nutrient Breakdown

Category: Soil Amendments
Published on April 30, 2016
Written by John Viertel
Did you plant soybeans into a lot of residue this year? This practice is becoming more and more common all across the country. The picture on the right shows a field that beans were planted into on Monday of this week. While part of the field was rolled, the majority was planted into the standing cereal rye. As you can see, there is a huge amount of cereal rye straw both on the ground and still standing. There should be no worries, right? The question is: what is going to happen to all that residue by this fall, and even next spring for the next crop? Will it break down and be easy to manage? What is happening to the nutrients that that cover crop has sequestered?

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Precision Focus: New Technology from Ag Leader Promises to Help Growers Be More Profitable

Category: Precision Ag
Published on March 01, 2016
Written by Jason Smith
It’s hard to believe that 2015 was here and is already gone. Seems like yesterday that I was setting up the first planter of the season. We saw many challenges last year, much like we do every year, and at the end of the day Mother Nature still reigns as queen. That’s the only factor that we can’t control. So with today’s corn prices still under $4.00, it’s up to us to make sure that we make the best of our decisions when it comes to precision ag.

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Reflection on 2015: Calculating the Benefits of CropChoice Starter and Sugar E-Boost

Category: Fertilizer
Published on February 02, 2016
Written by Brent Schmitz
Thank you to everyone for their business over the past year. It has been just a little bit over a year since Andrea and I bought SOIL Service, Inc. We very much appreciate all of the kind words and encouragement that we have heard over the last 13 months. They are more helpful than many of you know. We all appreciate our customers sticking with SOIL Service through the transition. CropChoice Starter fertilizer has come down substantially for 2016 when compared to its pricing for 2015. Obviously, grain prices have done the same, and the overall economics for 2016 are not looking as good as we have become accustomed to over the past four or five years…

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Use SOIL BOOST PLUS and LANDOIL to Manage Weeds

Category: Spray Surfactants
Published on February 01, 2016
Written by John Viertel
As 2015 has drawn to a close, it is time to really start thinking about next spring and what you are going to do on your operation in terms of weed control in your crops. There are a lot of options out there and many terms being used to describe them, including: “weed resistance management,” “mode of action,” “herbicide group number” and “site of action.” Even back before the Roundup Ready® era, we at SOIL Service talked about herbicides and helping them work better for you! So now that pre-emergent herbicides are being used on a large scale again, different modes of action are being used post-emergence (in tank mixes), and new products are being introduced, here are what our products are and what they can do for you!

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SOIL Service Offers a Limited-Time Discount on AerWays

Category: Equipment
Published on January 02, 2016
Written by George Salrin
Who would have guessed that the 2014 fall tillage would have had the yield impact that it did on the 2015 crop? Tilled soil of any type led to earlier planting dates this year, which in turn had a significant influence on emergence, final stand and yield.

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Clean Fields

Category: Spray Surfactants
Published on January 01, 2015
Written by John Viertel
In the above pictures, you should be able to see the size of both the soybeans and the weeds approximately 21 days after planting. The photo on the right is approximately 48 hours after the field was sprayed the first time with our Liberty herbicide program.

This particular field had been conventionally tilled and planted, but no pre-emerge herbicide had been applied. The next picture will show a strip that the sprayer missed with the first application. Yes, those weeds are taller than the soybeans.

So what do we need to take away from this? Even if a field is completely clean (conventional tilled or no till) weeds will get a foot hold very quickly, and if they are not managed in a timely manner, you will be trying to control them all season.

We have some recommendations to help have clean fields all season long:
• Make sure you start with a clean field
• Use a residual herbicide (maybe even two with different modes of action) preplant

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Missouri Soybean Yield Results – 2014

Category: Fertilizer
Published on November 01, 2014
Written by John Viertel
The pictures above are from our Crop Choice Soybean Starter Fertilizer plot in Central Missouri. They are no-till planted in 30 inch rows after corn in 2013, with a cereal rye cover crop that was pastured heavily this past spring. The plot was planted on May 12, 2014 after a burn down application of Buccaneer and Authority (using SO-IL Boost Plus and Landoil), then the whole field was treated with 24 ounces of SO-IL Boost Plus, 32 ounces of Landoil, 32 ounces of Slow Release Nitrogen, 32 ounces of Liberty Herbicide (because some of the few weeds present were greater than 4 inches tall), and 2 gallons of FOLIAR OPP for soybeans, applied at the V-5 soybean stage. This program worked very well again this year, weed control was excellent. The starter fertilizer plot was planted to see how our 3 gallon rate of 3-18-18-1 which included 1 pint each of Manganese, Calcium, and Zinc performed. As you can see from the results below, the program did very well.

No Starter – average of two strips – 65 bushels per acre

Starter program – average of 3 strips – 70.4 bushels per acre

That is an increase of 5.4 bushels per acre! With soybeans selling for $9 per bushel, that is an increase of $48.60 per acre!!

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