I’m always looking for a reason to talk about my dog because, well, I’m obsessed with him. I think I can use him to draw a good analogy of the importance of season-long scouting in your soybean fields. Let me put it like this: my dog is a living thing that I care for deeply. As he cannot talk, I am...

Did you know that more than one-third of the food humans consume depend on pollinators for reproduction, i.e., fruit set? And when talking about flowering plants, three-quarters require pollinator intervention for reproduction.  Granted, I know my audience here is primarily corn and soybean...

It’s never too early to think about plant diseases! There are few sure things in this great wide world of ours. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, gravity holds us down to the earth, and living things are susceptible to pests and pathogens.  When you put your beans out in...

Much of the 2020 crop has just been harvested, but it's never too early to discuss crop diseases in the forecast for 2021.  Did you come here thinking you might actually get some idea of what diseases will prove problematic next year? Good. Am I going to give you specific diseases for which to...

Needless to say, we have had an extremely atypical growing season in 2019. A prolonged planting window due to relentless rains, with many fields not planted until June, have resulted in many higher-than-average grain moisture levels at harvest. Observing elevated harvest moisture on a widespread...

There is no doubt that the 2019 growing season has been full of ups and downs. First there were the relentless rain events that delayed planting in the spring. Next we had an extended period without any rainfall late in the summer. And then, when it was about time to think about getting out in the...