With patience, Ken Weber harvests the data
Written by Jonathan Eisenthal
Planting and harvesting a data plot is a test of patience, according to Ken Weber, who just finished his 30th season contributing to data used by farmers across Minnesota. He devotes 40 acres of ground to variety plots on his farm, located halfway between Welcome and Ceylon, in Martin County, Minnesota.
“You harvest each variety one at a time, that’s 4 rows by 400 feet,” Weber said. “You pick that and then you stop and bring it over to the weigh wagon to unload it. And then it’s on to the next 400 feet. You do that again and again and again.” The process takes hours.
Since 1994, Weber has worked with United AgTech in Trimont. Independent Crop Consultant Steve Sodeman convinced him to join the program and worked with him for 20 seasons.
Asked whether the task of working a data plot has changed since 1994, Sodeman said: “After all these years there is still a huge need for independent, unbiased data for corn and soybean varieties. Minnesota Corn has continued to be the collection center and distributor of this important data. In this regard, nothing has changed. As Martin County plot supervisor from 1984 until 2015, as well as being a long-time user as an independent crop consultant, I can tell you that this data has served many farmers with this valuable information.”
Independent Crop Consultant Stephan Melson of United AgTech took over the plot work in 2016. Each season, he sets up the plots and measures the results, recording the unbiased information on yield, and noting observations about how well each of the plant varieties grows.
Melson said: “On Ken’s farm, we have one early maturing soybean plot and one late maturing bean plot; one early maturing corn plot and one late maturing. The rationale is that during the recent past we have seen a definite yield benefit for going to later maturing varieties. That said, it’s unfair to put a 99-day next to a 110-day, in my opinion, because they are so different. We want to compare apples to apples.”
Weber’s is a data plot, not a show plot. The point is not how good the plants look, but how they yield. In exchange for the ground and the labor, the seed companies provide the seed for free, and Martin County Corn and Soybean Growers pay him a small stipend, drawn from funds from each of the participating seed companies.
“The value of this project is that it’s independent,” Melson said. “Companies can enter their varieties, but I don’t have any stake in one doing better than another. I just want the information to be as accurate as possible. The data is what the data is.”
The three Martin County test plot cooperators plant the latest seeds across a variety of different soils and landscapes. Logging on to the Minnesota Corn variety plot data base, some farmers may cherry-pick the data, trying to find the farms that are the closest approximation to their soils and their type of operation, but Melson feels the best test is to see how a variety performs across lots of different scenarios—by choosing from the overall top-performing varieties, the farmer reduces risk, according to Melson.
Weber notes that issues like green snap have affected high yielding varieties in the past, though that appears to have been bred out of most, he believes. Melson said he includes notes on observations about the performance of each variety and it’s important to take that additional information into consideration.
Having worked on these plots the last 8 years, he agrees with 30-year veteran Weber: “You definitely see trends. You put in a variety, and it performs well, and you put it in again next year and it performs well again. So, you can say that’s a good variety. A lot of times when seed companies choose varieties for the plots, they put the new ones in. They are trying to get a feel whether a particular new variety is any good, should they run with this, or maybe try something different next year. For the companies, there is a preference to put in newer varieties and that’s what we want to see, too. For example, if a variety was introduced in 2017 and it’s still being planted over a broad area, I know that one well, and I don’t need to see it in a plot. I’d like to see the new one that’s coming out. Is that as good, or better, than the old one? How does it compare to all these varieties from the other companies? It’s about the progress towards a better, higher yielding plant.”
Part of what makes the data plot project work for Weber is his particular niche. Situated in one of the top pork producing counties in the nation, hogs have been Weber’s focus his entire career. He operates a small crop farm alongside his livestock business, raising 250 acres of corn and soybeans. A major benefit to his approach is that he can do very well without any commercial fertilizer, using only the manure from his 4,000 head nursery and 2,000 head wean-to-finish operation. Weber is surrounded by crop operations 10 times as big as his or more.
The fact that he “farms like it’s 1995” is an advantage for doing plot work, Weber says. That is, he uses the 8-row planter and the 6-row combine he’s had since he started, and his most recent vintage piece of equipment is his tractor, purchased in 1995. In order to assure the highest level of accuracy, a plot cooperator has to completely clean out the seed hopper after planting each variety. This would be a much larger task with the bigger planters most farmers use now.
“We’re in the donut hole, in the middle of all those guys,” Weber laughs, but he and his wife Vickie are perfectly happy to farm the way they do, with their son, Broc, plans to take over the operation that’s been in the family since the early 20th century.
Weber’s grandfather, Wilbur, was the one who convinced Ken to take the farm over, just out of high school. His dad had passed away when he was 14, and if the farm was going to stay in the family it was up to him. Weber has seen many changes since he started farming in 1987 and started the variety plot work in 1994. Which kind of reminded him of his grandpa Wilbur’s stories: among them, Wilbur told about how he and his brother owned an implement dealership in Trimont in the 1910s.
“They were trading with farmers, taking horses in exchange for tractors and tractors in the 1930s. He had a lot of stories,” Ken recalled. “I just turned 58. We have raised 6 kids here. We have 4 grandchildren now. Broc, the oldest, is working to take it over. I’m sure farming is going to change amazingly during his lifetime, the way it has for me.”
A link for the results of the test plots can be found at https://varietyplot.mncorn.org/reports/.
