DIFFERENCE MAKERS IN SEED

By Darren Hefty

I’ve talked to a lot of farmers once again over the last year.  Many were pretty disappointed about how all the product switching, returns, and ultimately cancellations were handled.  I’ll focus specifically on seed and look at the biggest difference makers farmers identified when it came to yield and satisfaction.

CREDIT BACK OR CASH

If you couldn’t get your cash back, this article could probably just stop here.  That stinks!  Never again.

REPLANTS

It’s no fun replanting but being treated well on the seed and getting soybean seed treatment like Hefty Complete for free rather than paying for it the second time was a popular comment of what went well.

EXTRA KICKERS ON SEED TREATMENT

One extra thing we do with Hefty Complete Soybean Seed Treatment is pay for foliar insecticide to control certain bugs that pop up later in your soybeans.  It works like free insurance to save you money down the road.  This is actually worth quite a bit and 2020 has the potential to be a big insect year.

PLANTABILITY

There is a difference in seed conditioning techniques and in the choices seed companies make regarding how much good seed they clean out.  By taking some of the big seed and some of the small seed out of each soybean seed lot, you end up with a much more even seed size.  This results in better plantability for you as all seed fits in your seed cells on the planter.  We go one extra step with the seed we condition, by utilizing color and shape sorting equipment, your seed both runs through your planter and pops out of the ground more consistently.

KNOW YOUR SEED TREATMENT

What does each ingredient on your seed treatment do?  That’s what I’d recommend asking your seed dealer.  Actually I’ll save you the trouble.  They often don’t know.  Hefty Complete Corn and Soybean Seed Treatments contain more useful and beneficial ingredients than any other seed treatment I’m aware of and it really makes a difference with emergence, vigor, and performance in the field.

MORE THAN WARM GERM

There was a small uprising in 2019 from a growing number of farmers running their own saturated cold germination tests on seed corn in the Upper Midwest.  What they found was that while the warm germination results on seed corn tags were pretty accurate, there was more to the story.  By running the very challenging saturated cold germination test, farmers saw how seed would perform in the worst conditions possible which happened to relate to the 2019 growing season closely.