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Thumb of Michigan | Ron, the narrow vs wide row beans always seems to be way more controversial than discussing, say, whos kids are dumber or something along those lines! I haven't ever been able to figure out why the question always gets so testy. I was once a fertilizer/chem dealer for a national company, and the number 1 thing always asked by my boss when I was going after a new account was whether the individual was credit worthy. At the time, corn wasn't a real big part of most guys rotations, but I'll use corn as an example for this discussion anyway. One day in the middle of the winter, I went through my customer list. Out of the 325 farms I sold to, about 260 of them planted corn. They all paid their bill, so there was AT LEAST 260 different ways to successfully raise corn in my little part of the world. They had to be successfull or they weren't on my customer list. Out of the 325 farms on my list, we had from 60" rows (veggies) to a many 36" rows (spuds) to the cash croppers. The cash croppers were evenly split between 30" and 28" rows. We now have quite a few 22" farms in the area, and the ones very near to my farm have serious reservations about recommending 22" rows to anyone unless dry beans or sugar beets are a big part of the rotation. The economics and the low to zero yield increase for corn and soys they've experianced doesn't pencil for those 2 crops in 22" over 30". Beets and dry beans aren't better every year, but seem to be a higher % of the time.This is from guys with super good numbers that have been 22" for at least 5 years. 30 to 50 miles north east of me, its a whole different story. And I'd venture to say that even though narrow rows are supposed to be a " northern" thing, my latitude is quite a bit farther north than many of the people that post here.
What I've always saw in the disscussions about soy row widths is someone justifying their row width of choice is almost always 3 things: Yield (which is what you asked about), weed control, and profitability.
All I can do accuratly is address my situation.
1. Yield- for me. it all depends. I reside on the edge of the Saginaw Valley. Most of my farm is in the valley, and my on farm tests show zero yield advantage to 7.5 or 15" soys. The narrower rows were always planted with either a 750 or 1560 deere drill. Never saw anything encouraging enough to try a split row planter. Thought I was doing something wrong, but have a couple of neighbors who have exactly the same results. First split row planter here came in about 2 years ago, but he bought it for dry beans. Been trying to talk him into putting some stuff in the front of it so we could try some soy plots, but he's pretty hesitant to do that.
I have less than 10% of my farm on top of a ridge that skirts the valley. Very heavy clay soils, and a lot of water erosion over the last million years. Very thin to no topsoil. Narrow rows perform way better than everything else every time. But I have at the most a total of 5% of my acres there planted to soys every year, and the yield is usually within a couple of the narrow rows. Not a big disaster regardless of row width.
East of that ridge, the soils are very variable and are more derived from swampy woodlands. 50/50 chance of doing better with narrow rows. By far, the best looking soys there are a neighbors who plants 28" rows. But he's the kind of guy that could grow excellant crops in 80" rows. He's rented a drill to plant soys in the past, and has had the same luck as I have had- not as profitable. But they were pretty. But if my entire farm was like this particular ground, I'd lean towards something narrower than 30" soys.
My point is, A very small % of my farm gets better yields with something other than 30". I could surmise that many are planting soys in narrow rows and getting the highest yields, but may have some farms that might do better in 30's. And I'll bet that their whole farm is narrow rows , just like mine is all not.
2. Weed control. No argument from me there. Narrow is better. For me, RUR soys have been a godsend. I spray in the fall, and then generally have to post glyphosate twice. But I also no-till everything, and I'm always dealing with weird stuff. I'm convinced that I can eradicate most problem weeds on my farm before I retire, so contrary to what I used to try and do, I'm going for 100% weed control through harvest. I might post narrow soys twice as well, I don't know.
3. Profitability. I don't feel I'm giving up the 5 bpa that the narrow row guys say I am. Maybe I am, but my test's don't show it. I think the seed cost differences are obvious, regardless of where the seed comes from or if its GMO or not. My very biggest hang up is equipment cost and manpower availability to do anything different than what I'm doing now.
I don't plant enough soys (around 800 acres this year) to justify anything other than 1 peice of equipment, especially when I can't see a yield increase by doing something different. I think that theres many ways to increase soy yields, but row width is quite a way down the list. I realize that many farms have enough people around to run 2 operations at planting as well. Any time that we've tried that, both operations seem to suffer because we have a very limited amount of bodies around at that time of the year. Generally, I like to plant soys first if the ground and weather isn't right for corn. If its corn planting conditions, we focus on nothing else but corn. But for our operation, I look at the iron expense as the real limit to swithching to narrower rows for one crop. Maybe all I'm saying is that we've never been able to figure out how to get higher yields in narrower rows like the farmers south of us in the I states. Ray Rawson worked on the row width thing for years, and he's back to 30's.
But back to your original question- in some parts of my neighborhood, the soys look phenominal, regardless of row width. Other areas have probably the poorest looking soys I've seen in years, regardless of row widths. All depends on how much excess rain this spring. Biggest yield killers we've had the last few years were aphids, hoping that conditions are right to keep them out. I've been seeing lots of bennies the last week, has me a bit on edge. | |
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Soybean row width discussion.....again
