ILSoyAdvisor Blog

ISA Director and soybean grower Don Guinnip farms near Marshall, in southern Illinois. We touched base with Guinnip in late September for a pre-harvest report. When we last talked, he was optimistic about his soybean yields and anticipated harvest to arrive on time. Let’s see how harvest went for Guinnip.

A late, but...

Planting continuous corn or a long corn and short bean rotation is common and farmers have learned how to manage through the challenges. But a continuous soybean rotation with a long rotation in bean and short rotation in corn is almost unheard of.  However, some growers do it because it takes less investment and work and there are fewer bushels to handle at harvest. And favorable grain prices and lower input costs compared to corn have some...

Producers plant soybeans either back into cornstalks or wheat stubble—both very high residue crops that can present some special challenges for the next crop. Rarely do they plant soybeans back into soybean stubble—and if they did, they wouldn’t be faced with any residue management challenges as the amount of residue is minimal and its low carbon-to-nitrogen ratio means it will decay rapidly.

While lots of residue on the surface is...

It is well known that Dan Arkels, a LaSalle County grower, was the first grower in Illinois to break the 100-bushel yield barrier and have it officially verified across a commercial scale. But how did Arkels’ yield get that high? What did he do that helped him join the club of growers in the U.S. that have hit the century mark? The problem with contest winners is that they are often secretive about what they did. They share information based...