Thursday, December 29, 2011

Seed


It's that time of the year to close the books on 2011 and get my seed ordered. I deal with several local companies that take good care of my needs.

Doing a little shopping, I went to the Seed Consultants Chemical Days. It is held in the sales room above the main office and there were three sales agronomists sitting there with their computers and prices and they go over your seed and chemical needs and questions.

I found out the same of what I have been hearing in the industry. Their top GMO hybrids are pretty much sold out. They had plenty of one main number but not the 3-5 diverse genetics I would like for my farm. They said that the popular 115 day hybrid was sold out and it was their highest yielder. They had two entries of that seed make the NCGA Contest Finals.

I saw the first chemical price sheet I have seen all winter. Looks like chemical prices from a wholesale-retailer was about 5 percent above last year. 4 pound glyphosate was $9.46 a gallon and 5 pound equivalent was $11.46. I also got a copy of the first inoculant prices I have seen this year and they were also up a little.

They are offering ABM Excalibre and Sabrex, Vault and Optimize, the major products in the inoculant industry. You can have them put on your seed with your Bayer or Syngenta chemical fungicide and/or insecticide products of Poncho or Cruiser packages or split them up. There are so many options today we didn't have three years ago.

My trucker didn't get my load of beans to Cincinnati Tuesday morning. I found out he had lost his wallet at WalMart Monday night and it had all his driving licenses and permits in it. I said let's pray to Saint Anthony to get help to find them becaue it works for me and I usually find the lost article in an hour. We said our prayer and amens and within 30 minuts WalMart called him, they had found his billfold!

I woke up this morning smiling, giving thanks for another day. I trust this will be a good one for you and I as we wrap up the last days of 2011.

What a year!

Ed Winkle

2 comments:

  1. I wish there were more choices for non-GMO corn. We are sandwiched between sweetcorn growers and try to be good neighbors. We also don't have the really bad weed problems we had some years ago and don't really need the GMO traits for silage corn. There are far fewer independent seed companies than there once was, and far fewer non-GMO silage varieties than there once was. It is pretty crazy when a bag of seed corn too expensive to accidently drop!

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  2. There is still a good assortment here Budde, what maturity and plant characteristics do you need?

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