Do New Products Really Work on My Farm?
Feb 02, 2022
Josh Fosenburg
Sales Agronomist, Sully, IA
“Do new products work on my farm?” Every year, sales agronomists like myself get asked this question when we start making plans for the upcoming year. Does it pay? is usually the next question that we get asked. These are both valid questions that I like to have an answer to when I’m asked. Questions like these are why Key Cooperative has developed an internal trial program.
We’ve all seen the corporate guarantees of anywhere from .5 to 50 bushel per acre if you use this product or that product. For this reason, we wanted to develop an internal system that would put products or practices to the test locally, not in different states. We want to know what we’re recommending is producing a positive ROI on your farm, not just another product on your acre.
Over the past 5+ years, we’ve been offering this trial program to test new products and practices. During this time, we’ve also compiled a database from previous years’ results so that we can compare different years and weather patterns. We report all of the data, the good and the bad, then show the average response. We then use an average commodity price for the specified crop and run a “breakeven” yield response for ROI.
Some of the products that we’ve tested/are testing include nitrogen stabilizers, micro-nutrient additives with top-dress urea, plant growth regulators, foliar fertilizers, fungicides and seed treatments. We’ve also developed a booklet that summarizes our findings, which your agronomist has access to. Below is an example of what a typical report looks like.
Consider participating in a trial!
Our trials are typically 20 acre blocks which we would need to compare against an “untreated” block. The product is typically free to the grower as long as we can pull the yield data off your harvest monitor for that field. If you’re interested in being part of our trial program, reach out to your agronomist to get signed up!
Sales Agronomist, Sully, IA
“Do new products work on my farm?” Every year, sales agronomists like myself get asked this question when we start making plans for the upcoming year. Does it pay? is usually the next question that we get asked. These are both valid questions that I like to have an answer to when I’m asked. Questions like these are why Key Cooperative has developed an internal trial program.
We’ve all seen the corporate guarantees of anywhere from .5 to 50 bushel per acre if you use this product or that product. For this reason, we wanted to develop an internal system that would put products or practices to the test locally, not in different states. We want to know what we’re recommending is producing a positive ROI on your farm, not just another product on your acre.
Over the past 5+ years, we’ve been offering this trial program to test new products and practices. During this time, we’ve also compiled a database from previous years’ results so that we can compare different years and weather patterns. We report all of the data, the good and the bad, then show the average response. We then use an average commodity price for the specified crop and run a “breakeven” yield response for ROI.
Some of the products that we’ve tested/are testing include nitrogen stabilizers, micro-nutrient additives with top-dress urea, plant growth regulators, foliar fertilizers, fungicides and seed treatments. We’ve also developed a booklet that summarizes our findings, which your agronomist has access to. Below is an example of what a typical report looks like.
Consider participating in a trial!
Our trials are typically 20 acre blocks which we would need to compare against an “untreated” block. The product is typically free to the grower as long as we can pull the yield data off your harvest monitor for that field. If you’re interested in being part of our trial program, reach out to your agronomist to get signed up!