Producers Blog

It’s that time of year again where farmers are making big decisions that will affect next year’s bottom line. With all the information that is available to us in today’s farming it can be overwhelming at times.  Here at Producers Hybrids we would like to help you make those decisions easier on a field-by-field basis, which allows us to better place our products to enhance your yields. A simple digital ag tool that we often use is Advantage Acre by AgReliant Genetics.

Advantage Acre is a digital ag platform that can help farmers organize and plan their cropping intentions, as well as help with recordkeeping for the upcoming year. Although there are many features too expansive to touch on in this article, one of the best features is the ability to enter fields and view their soil types for free. Upgrading your account to the Plus version of Advantage Acre gives you access to the productivity index generated within the program as well as 11-month forecasted weather data. This is a very useful tool when it comes to placement of hybrids and varieties.

Once we know soil types from SSURGO soil data incorporated within Advantage Acre, we have a better understanding of how to place our products on your farm. After we’ve placed products correctly, we can create seed plans on a field-by-field basis. Those seed plans will be vital to making sure you’re getting products placed in the fields that were discussed 6 months in advance. After creating a seed plan for your farm, we can export reports that will have all the information you need to make sure things go as planned. Field name and acres, hybrid, population, planned planting date, units needed as well as areas to take notes are included in a well-organized seed plan that can be at your side in the planting tractor.  Take a look at an example report.

Hybrid/variety selection is one of the most important decisions affecting yield that you have control over. A study done by South Dakota State University in 2013 showed as much as a 35-bushel difference from the highest to the lowest yielding hybrid that year in their trial. (Source: iGrow Corn: Best Management Practices) If we can plan and execute based on the best product knowledge we have available, paired with knowledge of the field gained by Advantage Acre, our chances of success go up immensely.

When spring comes, there is also a feature in which we can print out seed placard reports that can be used to label pallets/seed boxes to ensure the products are placed according to what we talked about the previous fall. These reports are generated within Advantage Acre and offer a professional, easy-to-read field “snapshot”.

To utilize Advantage Acre to help you make plans for next year, visit www.advantageacre.com to get started with your free account today. For more information, contact your local dealer, District Sales Manager or Sales Agronomist today.