If a recent study is any indication, getting more crop production from every inch of water is going to become even more important in the near future.The Institution of Chemical Engineers recently released a report describing the amount of hidden water used in food and drink production, estimated at up to 1.8 million liters per person each year — equivalent an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Being able to predict when a field of corn will reach particular leaf stages can be useful for scheduling post-emergence applications of certain herbicides and sidedress N fertilizer.

Farm production expenditures reached a record-high $318.7 billion in 2011, a 10.2 percent increase over 2010, according to the Farm Production Expenditures 2011 summary released today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).

If farmers consider potential net revenue, they may not make the switch from corn to soybeans as fast as if they consider just the potential yield loss.

Grain prices moved higher this year and the costs of growing them are likely to do the same in the year ahead, according to Purdue University estimates.