Selecting the most appropriate seed can improve profitability immensely on your farm. But often this is a difficult decision because so many options are available.

For many years, I’ve relied on test-plot data from universities and seed companies as a basis for choosing corn hybrids and soybean varieties for our farm. This decision has become more complicated through the years.

Many times, these varieties and hybrids aren’t entered into university trials for an unbiased comparison.

Selection System

I’ve developed a system to select and evaluate seed for our farm.

I approach the selection process from three angles.

• First, I follow the university trials to pick out their top-yielding hybrids and varieties.

• Second, I go to my local seed representatives and ask them to pick out the hybrids and varieties that they feel will perform the best on my farm.

• Third, I use my precision-farming system to help me evaluate these university and seed company hybrids and varieties in replicated plots on our farm.

Normally, I will have about 20 corn hybrids and 20 soybean varieties in our farm plots. In selecting hybrids, I plant three or four hybrids I’ve used on the farm in the past year and then select 15 to 16 new hybrids from the seed companies and university test plots to evaluate in our plots.

Depending on how the hybrids perform, I generally keep about 60% to 65% of our acres in hybrids that have a track record on our farm, and plant about…