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NC Iowa | Putting your money towards a yield monitor would be a much better investment in my opinion.
You will then be able to plant some different populations and map them across different soils (SMS works great). Most get so excited to plant higher populations in better ground, I have seen zero evidence of that being a profitable investment. All hybrids have the ability to flex, no matter what the company says.
If I was to variable rate, it would be to test the low end of populations on marginal ground. There have been posts on Agtalk with guys in dryland areas planting 18-25K, and still yielding 200 bpa on a good year. The ability to save money on marginal ground would be much easier then the ability to have higher yields on better ground by population changes.
For population studies over 4 years, visit http://www.isafarmnet.com/ and click on trial results. When they actually analyzed and verified differences in yield in person with field visits, the majority of the larger differences ended up being much lower live plants/ acre then what was reported as seeds planted/acre. For example, farmer said they planted 35k and 30k, actual stands were 30k and 25k. In short, as long as there was above 28,000 plants/acre, there was no economic gain to higher populations. | |
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Variable rate corn planting ???
