Alex Renk
Renk Seed held their annual dealer day at the company’s home farm test plots near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on Wednesday. Overall the corn, soybean and alfalfa plots looked good. Alex Renk says they do have irrigation on the seed production acreage on the farm although it didn’t help with pollination when temperatures were above 90 degrees. As a result, some varieties did not pollinate but thanks to the number of acres they planted this year, they will have no problem supplying seed to their customers next year. Jeff Renk says they have done an assessment of their situation and their dealers, “We feel that our seed supply is going to be something around 150 percent of what we sold last year on the low end and 170 percent on the high end.” However, other seed companies are not in that good of shape and Jeff says once we get past Christmas, “when seed companies have to come clean about how much seed they actually have, it will be the Wild West.”
Jeff Renk
The dry conditions this year do present an extra challenge when selecting seed for next year. Jeff Renk says “it will be a year to sift and sort” and growers are going to be looking “for the durable products not the race horses.” He says the influences of 2012 are going to drive decisions for at least the next five years. Alex says when you look at test plots this year, you will end up “throwing a lot of them out” but the varieties which fared better this year deserve a closer look. Jeff adds Renk Seed “will select some very durable, long-term products.”
As for the soybeans, Alex says things aren’t too bad, “If they survived July, the rains of August are helping them fill out quite nicely.” The real test will be once the combines start rolling, Jeff says it won’t be a record crop, but it will be a good crop. One big factor this year was spider mites and how well growers worked to control them. [MORE PHOTOS]
AUDIO:Alex Renk comments on the year 7:33
AUDIO:Jeff Renk comments on the year 10:30 mp3
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