Field day explores residue, water management

Crystal Reed Lee Agri-Media

EFFINGHAM, Ill. – The Southern Illinois edition of 2025 Becknology Days included several tours on topics from water management to spraying with drones. Beck’s Hybrids held the event Aug. 8 in Effingham

Matt Montgomery, agronomy-education lead, said crop production comes down to how the season starts, then maintaining yield potential and having harvestable yield. One of the tours focused on setting a corn planter correctly and managing corn residue without tillage.

He addressed the benefits to breaking down that residue.

“There are nutrients bound up in that residue, and if we break them up into those confetti-size pieces, we will get that fertility back into the soil that much more quickly,” he said.

Residue breakdown important

Tony Uthell is a technician with Beck’s Practical Farm Research program. He said his team has looked at several methods to manage residue. Farmers saw return on investment using a chopping corn head when they hit 305 acres, and at 289 acres for a Yetter Stalk Devastator in a corn-after-corn study. Looking at soybeans after corn, a chopper head paid off at 906 acres.

Chopping isn’t the only option, Montgomery said. The biological space adds “workers” to the situation by adding bacteria to chew up residue. But their research shows using biologicals for residue degradation has not paid off in southern-Illinois plots.

Montgomery said the farm-research team spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to make nitrogen dollars more efficient. He presented multilocation data with nitrogen-application rates of 130 to 250, with 160 units for a 236-bushel crop feeling lower than some might expect. In southern-Illinois data, 130-160 is where they see the best return on investment, which is 0.7 pounds of nitrogen per bushel.

“We encourage you to do some nitrogen studies year in and year out on your farm,” Montgomery said. “Figure out what you need to tweak your nitrogen rate down.”

In another nitrogen study, Uthell described treatment of 190 units of nitrogen applied, with a control of 190 units of anhydrous with N-Serve. Researchers then utilized three application methods. The first was with a planter in a 2x2x2 situation. Then at V3, they put on the remaining 60 units using a sidedress bar. The final method was at V8 with wide bars on the sprayer.

Uthell said the fall anhydrous followed by 60 units with the planter was the method that won out in southern Illinois. This was the first year gathering data, with second-year data currently in the ground. He said the most important thing farmers can do when running a planter is to go out in the field and look around.

Water management considered

Another riding tour at the event addressed water management. Research results capped off 10 years of research and shared the best investment for tile spacing and depth, sub-irrigation and drip irrigation.

Alex Long, a Beck’s field agronomist, said irrigation and tile have been on the Effingham farm for 10 years. The farm has several research blocks.

• control

• contour tile

• drip irrigation

• 30-foot pattern tile with drip irrigation

• 30-foot pattern tile

The areas that have contour or tile have gates they can use in the summertime to flood the tiles with water from below.

Long said the way they remove the water is through surface drainage or evaporation. A 2-foot depth on clay-type soils with 30-foot spacing is going to maximize the response but minimize the cost, he said. The 30-foot tile plus drip irrigation gives the best yield, but he believes what is carrying the yield is drip irrigation.

“When we can irrigate with that tile we see the different steps there,” he said.

The researchers have bean and corn data for every year. Drew Beckman, a Beck’s field agronomist, said soybeans show stress later in the season. He shared those bean results.

• drip irrigation alone – 5.6-bushel increase

• contour tile – 5.1-bushel yield increase

• 30-foot tile drainage with drip irrigation – 5-bushel increase

• 30-foot tile drainage – 1.5 bushels increase

The researchers have some sensor-based sub-irrigation that gauges how quickly moisture level is increasing or decreasing before irrigating.