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Managing soybeans from the beginning to the end of the season  

Southeastern Illinois Farmer Greg McClure says it’s not too late to impact soybean yield.

“We’re too late to impact plant structure, but depending on what growth stage your crops are at, you can think about what you can do to help conversion from flowers to pods,” he says. “Ultimately, all we sell at the elevator is the seed itself and for most of these beans we haven’t even started to size those seeds yet. We have to be thinking about what we can do yet to size the actual fruit of what we’re going to haul to the elevator and get paid on. I think that’s a piece that a lot of people overlook. It’s late in the year and we’re starting to think about harvest, but I think there’s still an opportunity to impact yield.”

McClure also works in R&D in a product development formulation for BW Fusion.

He says timely rains during August have a great impact on soybean yields, but management throughout the season makes the biggest difference in the crop.

“It truly is management from the beginning to the end,” he says. “The farmers that do that have the most opportunity to gather and to be rewarded by those August rains.”

McClure says there’s been a learning curve on his farm to take soybean production to the next level.

“I think I went down a lot of the wrong paths and tried to raise soybeans like corn. I realized that soybean production requires a full season focus. In that early season we impact structure of that plant and set up a totally different yield potential when we do the things right up front,” he says. “…what I want to do is try to get growers to open up their minds to the idea that you can’t raise soybeans in the same way that you do corn and then we need to focus on how we build a soybean plant and set it up for as much success as we can to grasp as much yield potential at the end of the season.”

Brownfield interviewed McClure during a recent DEKALB/Asgrow field day. He highlighted the importance of understanding the role nutrients play in soybean production.