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How Do You Pick Your Corn Hybrids?

March 11, 2022

Question: What are your standard corn hybrids that you use for one-half or more of your production every year? What traits (i.e., cold tolerance, disease tolerance, etc.) have you found would yield the best in your own farm’s trials and why?

Answer: I prefer not to get into the brands that I use, the brands change as the test plots tell me which products produce the best and most reliably. I plant 95-105-day hybrids and use my test plots to drive which hybrids I plant. I generally plant about 65% of my acres to hybrids that I have used for 2-3 years and then select a new hybrid from 2-3 years of testing for another 25% of my production. Then about 10% of my acres each year are new hybrids that are in our test plots. I generally let the agronomist for each company select the hybrids with the best disease tolerance and early season growth characteristics.



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Leverich jim

Jim Leverich

No-Till Farmer's Conservation Ag Operator Fellow for 2022, Jim Leverich is a no-till farmer near Sparta, Wis. His 1,000 acre-farm has been in his family since 1864 and no-tilled since 1984. An innovator and educator, Leverich has 35-plus years of no-till and on-farm research experience, and possesses a deep, practical understanding of what makes no-till work. For his contributions while at the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension Service, Leverich was named the No-Till Innovator of the Year (Research & Education category) in 2006. A talented presenter and writer, Leverich was a regular guest columnist for No-Till Farmer in 2011 when it earned the Gold Medal as the nation’s top newsletter from the American Society of Business Press Editors.