By Darren Hefty

I love focusing on what’s coming down the road in the next 10 years.  I like imagining what a change that will make on my farm and what I need to do to prepare for it.  My brother, however, likes to bring me back down to earth by saying, “Yes, that will be fun, but what will make our farm money right NOW?”  What a downer!  Okay, how about a compromise?  Let’s look at what’s coming in the next couple years and what’s working right now that you should consider if you aren’t already doing it.

THE FUTURE

If you ask any of the big biotech companies what’s coming in soybeans in the next decade, they’ll tell you new soybean cyst nematode protection, higher yields, better tolerance to salts and iron deficiency chlorosis, improvements in the oil content, and of course some new herbicide tolerance traits.  Since the herbicide tolerance is coming the fastest, let’s look at that.

Dicamba tolerance, or Roundup Ready 2 Xtend, is coming for the 2015 growing season pending regulatory approvals.  You could spray approved dicamba products in-crop.  I’m excited about what we can do in our burndowns.  For example, picture using a quart of dicamba on marestail, dandelion, and winter annual weeds without fear of injuring the soybeans you’re going to plant that week.  Wow!  Then, spraying dicamba in-crop with your Roundup once or twice will be tremendous, as well.  There are still drift and volatility concerns to manage, but we’ve been using dicamba for decades and know what to expect.

The same could be said about the 2,4-D tolerance trait, also known as Enlist.  The burndown options and in-crop power of using 2,4-D will be big.  This will be a new formulation of 2,4-D that we haven’t seen before.  It’s not an amine or an ester.  This is 2,4-D Choline, which has greatly reduced volatility and drift concerns compared to older 2,4-Ds.
HPPD tolerance, or the new Balance Bean, is going to be helpful, as well.  This adds a 4th site of action for us to use pre-emerge that we otherwise are not using post-emerge in soybeans.  It should be a great resistance management tool.

Most of these traits are going to eventually get stacked with each other and with current and future Roundup Ready and LibertyLink traits.  Our future for more and better weed control options is coming in the next few years.

THE PRESENT

Returning to Brian’s comment from earlier, let’s look at what’s out there right now to help you get the most out of your soybean acres

  1. Three Pre Strategy – Use one of the DNAs (Treflan, Sonalan, or Prowl) plus one of the PPOs (like Authority or Valor) and some metribuzin (used to be marketed as Sencor).  All three of these sites of action cannot be used post-emerge and offer tremendous weed control.
  2. Fertility – Most operations are under-fertilizing soybeans.  Focus on at least supplying crop removal levels.  A 2 X 2 placement is safe, and deep placement via strip-till has shown promising results.  In-furrow use can be done but only as a small portion of the total program.
  3. Seed Treatments – More than with just the Inovate or Acceleron fungicide and insecticide treatments, we’re also seeing very good gains with biologicals like QuickRoots and inoculants like ROOTastic.  On the seed is a great way to deliver support for your soybean plants, and it doesn’t require another trip across the field.
  4. Multiple In-Crop Applications – While we struggle encouraging some operations to make one extra trip across the field with a fungicide or foliar nutrition, others are making multiple applications of these products and seeing a positive return on investment.  There are many opportunities to increase soybean yields if you want to do it.

Soybeans are a very exciting crop with many new traits coming.  There are also a number of easy and proven practices most farmers are not using that could significantly increase your soybean yields today.  Work with your agronomist on at least a portion of your acres to start getting more yield and profit in 2014!