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Cutting back on seed technology costing farmers

An agronomist says problems related to growers spending less money on seed technology are starting to appear.

John Goeden covers South Dakota for Channel Seed and says quite a few customers decided to plant lower-traited or conventional corn as a way to reduce costs this year.

“In a normal year, not necessarily a high-pressure year, you’re going to see a lot of those products start to fail.  Particularly later in the season.”

While there are some effective weed control measures for conventional crops, Goeden says herbicide-tolerant varieties continue to be the better choice for the growers he works with.

Electing to plant seeds with fewer traits is also coming back to bite some growers, he says.

“Some of these guys were trying to plant just RoundUp only, and (are) dealing with earworms in a lot of cases with no above-ground protection.  So that’s also something that’s going to take some of that yield off of those fields.”