Ron,

We are seeing folks going back to 30" beans in order to deal with the residue also. In a corn/bean or corn/corn/bean etc rotation and as corn yields increase, the levels of residue are increasing dramatically. That corn residue is also getting tougher and longer-lived with the newer high yielding corn varieties.

A planter on 30" rows has a lot more options open for dealing with one two or often three years of corn residue.  I wish I had a dime for every request for row cleaners for a JD750-1895 drill.

The other alternative is extensive tillage to reduce the amounts of corn residue which tends to offset the cost advantages of notill drilling. At $50/unit beans and higher priced Roundup, A planter and maybe even more spreading type varieties maybe coming back.

Another factor is the relative importance to growers of beans relative to corn in their overall profitability. If you go to a large planter to get your corn in the ground in a very timely manner, maybe the importance of having two separate machines is less than the economics of getting more acres out of one very large planter? Esp with the central seed hopper systems coming on board, big wide planters may make sense for beans as well as corn, especially if they can handle higher levels of corn residue.

Jim at Dawn