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2020 vision while remembering previous field conditions

An extension soybean agronomist says growers need to revisit previous field conditions as they prepare for the upcoming growing season.

Purdue University’s Shaun Casteel says many farmers were unable to complete fall tillage and fieldwork in 2018 that caused them to experience compaction and fertilizer issues is 2019.

“So we’re going to have that come back on us again in 2020 if we didn’t take the opportunity in the fall of 2019 to correct them so looking at all of those let’s move forward and correct them if we can and if we haven’t already,” he says.

Casteel says timely planting of soybeans will be critical this growing season.

“That way we will have a plant that’s being produced in cooler conditions so we have less internode elongation so we end up having a nice compact plant that uses sunlight well and then we have a plant that’s going to have a longer duration of seed fill,” he says. “All those factors come into play to give us that yield potential.”

Advice he has for growers is to continue to scout fields throughout the entire growing season.

Brownfield spoke to Casteel at the 2020 Purdue University Top Farmer Conference.