Explore your land distribution options to determine which is the best fit for your family farm. By: Mike Downey Undivided interests By far the most common method I run across is one generation leaving the next equal undivided ownership interests in all the real estate. This is the easiest way to treat your children equally […]

IDOA releases online training for farmers who handle anhydrous ammonia.

Relative acres of corn and soybeans vary across Illinois. Northern Illinois has more corn than soybeans acres and southern Illinois has more soybean than corn acres (see farmdoc daily, October 13, 2020). We provide more information on corn relative to soybean acres across the Midwest in this article. As acreages shift across the nation, this will serve […]

Nitrogen applied as anhydrous ammonia in the fall is an effective source of N for the corn crop, but is also a little more subject to loss compared to N applied in the spring. One of the main factors that determines how much of the fall-applied N is subject to loss is how much of the ammonia converts to nitrate (is nitrified) in the fall and early spring, before the next planting season.

Fall herbicide treatments have fallen off over the past several years for a couple of reasons, among them the effectiveness of new soybean trait systems for managing marestail, some generally crappy weather in late fall, and efforts to reduce input costs.  We are seeing a resurgence in some weeds, such as dandelion, which respond well […]

Recently there have been a flood of reports of Bacterial leaf streak (BLS) from areas within Iowa.  Not surprisingly reports of  BLS have started to come in from portions of Northern Illinois, an area of the state that has been subject to several significant rain events over the past two weeks.  Severe weather pushed through these areas yesterday, […]

United Prairie’s COVID-19 Plan until further Notice – Please Read

Japanese beetles have been arriving throughout Illinois over the last couple of weeks, and are becoming pretty conspicuous in some areas.

Even though no crop will be planted, weed control practices still should be implemented to reduce seed production from summer annual weed species.

Seed suppliers continue to come with new genetics that are only available in VT2 and these genetics are some of the highest yielding genetics out there. In an effort to help us make decisions for this coming year we participated in a joint effort with Wyffels and put yellow sticky traps in our bean plot fields.