Time Creates Opportunity

How Planning Early Increases Yield

Every fall, we talk about the importance of planning early for next year’s crop. It is easy to look at early planning as simply getting decisions made sooner. Choose the hybrids, figure out the acres, make a fertility plan and move on.

But what if planning earlier actually helped us grow more bushels and improve the return on every dollar we invest in the crop?

That is the real value of early planning.

The goal is not to get decisions out of the way. The goal is to give ourselves more time, more information and more opportunity to make better decisions.

Start With the Field, Not the Product

Good planning starts with a simple question:

What are we trying to accomplish in this field?

Before we choose a hybrid, biological or fertility program, we need to understand the environment we are putting that crop into.

What is the yield goal? What has the field produced historically? What do our soil tests tell us? What are the limitations of the field? How much water do we have available? What disease and insect pressure have we experienced? Where are the opportunities to push production?

The more we know about the field, the more intentional we can be with every investment we make in it.

That allows us to match the right hybrid to the field instead of simply selecting a hybrid we like. From there, we can begin building the rest of the management plan around the genetics, environment and yield goal.

Build a System, Not a Collection of Inputs

Selecting the right hybrid is important, but it is only one piece of the puzzle.

Once we have identified the hybrid and yield goal, we can start asking better questions.

What population gives us the best opportunity to maximize that hybrid? What fertility program supports that population and yield goal? Where can biologicals help us improve nutrient availability, root development or stress tolerance? What disease and insect risks should we prepare for? What should we be watching after emergence? What management decisions will matter as we move through V6, V8, tassel and grain fill?

This is where planning starts creating real value.

We are not just choosing seed. We are designing a crop.

Seed, fertility, biologicals, crop protection and irrigation are often treated as separate decisions. The corn plant does not see them that way. Every one of those investments is interacting with the same plant, in the same environment, trying to produce the same ear.

The opportunity for greater ROI comes when those investments work together instead of independently.

More Time Gives Us More Information

One of the arguments against planning early is that we do not know everything yet.

That is absolutely true.

We will know more later.

But starting the planning process today does not mean the plan cannot change tomorrow.

In fact, that is one of the greatest advantages of starting early.

As harvest progresses, we learn more about how hybrids performed. Plot results become available. Yield maps give us another year of information. Soil samples can identify fertility needs and opportunities. We can evaluate what worked this season and what did not.

Every new piece of information gives us another opportunity to improve the plan.

Starting early does not lock us into decisions. It gives us more time to make those decisions better.

Planning for Yield and ROI

Our Max Yield System is built around the idea that planting establishes the yield potential we will spend the rest of the growing season trying to capture.

But successful planting begins long before the planter enters the field.

It begins by putting ourselves in position to plant the right hybrid, at the right population, into the right fertility program, supported by the right biological and crop protection strategies.

And this is where yield and ROI come together.

The highest yielding program is not necessarily the program with the most inputs. The best ROI does not necessarily come from spending the least money either.

The goal is to invest the right dollar, in the right place, for the right reason.

If an additional investment creates more yield value than it costs, it deserves consideration. If it does not fit the field, the hybrid or the yield environment, that same dollar may be better invested somewhere else.

The more time and information we have, the better we can make those decisions.

Plan Early. Plan Better.

Early planning is not valuable simply because it is early.

It is valuable because time creates opportunity.

Time to understand the field. Time to evaluate genetics. Time to analyze soil and yield data. Time to build fertility around the crop we are trying to produce. Time to determine where biologicals and crop protection can provide a return. And time to build a post planting management strategy before the crop ever goes into the ground.

We are not trying to get next year’s decisions out of the way.

We are trying to give ourselves enough time and information to make them better.

Because when we make better decisions and get every investment working together toward the same yield goal, early planning becomes more than planning.

It becomes yield management.

Your Farm. Your Future. Our Focus.