The Farm Ops class at Iowa Central?Community College in Fort Dodge uses conventional tillage and strip-till on separate fields to compare production and profitability.

For Farm News

FORT?DODGE – Iowa Central Community College’s Farm Ops spring class had many decisions to make before planting season could begin.

Some of those decisions were, seed, insurance, spray packages and marketing decisions for old and new crop.

Grant Klever, from NEW Cooperative, spoke to the class about different spraying options for the 2011 crop year.

Klever recommended two spraying options for the corn crop offering the pluses and minuses. These included:

• Two-pass option: Pro- It controls weeds from start to finish and prevents weeds from emerging and removing nutrients used by the crop. Con-Potential plant damage and compaction, higher costs due to application trips and only average control of emerged winter- annuals that appear in strip-till farming.

• Single-pass option: Pro-Limits trips across field and field disturbance and multiple modes of action reduces the probability of resistant weeds. Cons-Rain can delay applications and emerged weeds over four inches can cause yield loss.

Lucas Easley and Sharon Phipps discussion various options open to ICCC’s farm ops class this spring for maximizing row crop yields during 2011.

The farm ops class decided to go with the one-pass system due to the fact that it uses strip-till on some acres, which has worked well for the class in the past.

Soybean spraying options including:

• Two-pass option: Pro-Controlling weeds from start to finish and allows for more flexibility to change spraying options. Cons-Timing of pre-plant chemical may be pressured by weather and the chance the class may need to later spray an insecticide with a separate pass.

• Two-pass, non-pre-emergence option. Pro-Potential for fewer trips across the field and lower cost do to the flexibility of adding insecticide, fungicide, or foliar fertilizer with the second pass. Cons-The only herbicide activity is glyphosate, most likely causing resistant weed species and rain and muddy conditions can delay applications resulting in yield loss.

The class opted for the two-pass, pre-emergence system because if the class misses the “window” for the pre-emergence option it can still use the two-pass non-pre-emergence option; and keep the beans clean from the start for maximum yield potential.

In addition the class has used this system and has been pleased with the strip-till and conventional tillage results.

Others assisting the class this spring included Channel Seeds’ Dave Altman and Tim Barrett; Pioneer Hy-Bred’s Denis Kinley, Mike Johnson; Scott Oswald with crop insurance and Grant Klever with NEW Cooperative.