Is there going to be a shortage of corn or soybean seed in 2022? Will there be seed quality issues due to drought in seed production areas? I’ll discuss those in a minute.
First, I want to talk about the real reasons why booking and/or purchasing your seed early this year is so important.
Return on Investment
Brian and I talk often about running your farm like a business. Having fun, raising your family, supporting your community, and having great-looking crops are as important as you want them to be on the farm. Turning a profit from your farming activities is what allows all of those good things to be sustainable. The best way to make more money on the farm is to look at your return on investment with every decision you make. You know you’re going to buy seed. Purchasing it when you can get the best discounts saves you a lot of money. If the September 20th discount is 10%, for example, and you plant the crop seven months later on April 20th, that’s 17% APR you saved!
Best Varieties
Booking your seed early, even if you don’t pay for it right away, locks in exactly the varieties you and your agronomist decide are the best for your farm. If all your land is absolutely perfect and has no disease, soil pH, insect, nematode, or nutrient problems, then picking the right variety doesn’t matter nearly as much. In all other cases, it does! New varieties are coming out primarily for one reason: they perform better in the field. Again, you’re going to plant seed anyway. Why not plant the seed varieties that will give you a better return on investment?
Best Quality
The most obvious illustration of this is with soybeans. We grow multiple fields for almost every soybean variety we produce for Hefty Brand Soybeans. We test all of them for germination and other measurements of quality. We clean and process the best seed first, then the next best, and so on. At the end of the year, we dump any unsold seed. Why would any company save their best for last and potentially have to just dump it at the elevator? They wouldn’t.
Now back to those two questions I asked previously…
First, we are not expecting seed shortages in 2022. The seed corn crop, for the most part, looks great and high-yielding. Our soybean seed acres are up significantly this summer with Xtend, XtendFlex, and Enlist E3 traits for 2022.
As for potential seed quality issues, there are always some differences from field to field. We work with a large number of seed growers, and our seed is grown in many different communities to spread the risk. Weather conditions around harvest can change things, but right now we are expecting seed quality to be good.