Farm Takeover! Planting GMO corn

It's planted!!! on April 23, 2016 I planted #My60Acres!

Two weeks ago, April 23, was the day I had been waiting for since I successfully coerced my farmer husband into letting me take over sixty acres! 

To read about #my60Acres from the start, go here and scroll down to the bottom!
 
It was finally planting day!   Picking the right time to plant involves a little bit of planning, some major guessing and hopefully some good luck!
 
Long before planting however I worked with Matt to figure out exactly what type of corn seed we would use.
 
There's a lot of Internet myth surrounding seed selection - especially corn seed. The truth is that as farmers, the decision on what seeds to buy, from what companies, is completely up to us!
 
There are multiple companies - some rather larger, some pretty small, that develop and sell seed.
 
Each company has numerous varieties - each with different traits, different growing seasons, different soil preferences.
 
For #My60Acres, I knew I would be using Pfister Seeds.  Pfister is a smaller seed company that is owned by Dow Agriscience.
 
We like doing business with Pfister because we have access to the latest technology while also having benefit of doing business with a smaller company.  Everyone we work with is truly engaged in our success as growers - enough so that Matt decided to start selling Pfister seed two years ago.
 
From there we still had to select what hybrid we would use.
 
Nearly all corn planted in this country is a hybrid.  This means they take two parent lines and cross them for the seed production.  The resulting offspring of those crosses is a more effective seed than either parent line.  This is a breeding technique done on nearly all corn - conventional, non GMO and organic. 
 
We also knew that we would need "Roundup Ready" corn, which is a GMO developed trait.  Because we use no till practices and cover crops to reduce soil erosion, increase soil health and the health of the organisms living within our soils , we rely on glyphosate (Roundup) to control weeds and kill our cover crops. 
 
If we left the cover crop standing and allowed weeds to take over, our corn would have to fight for resources and wouldn't produce a profitable yield.  And the reality is we have to be profitable to be sustainable!
 
We also have a choice on how many days we want the corn to mature in.   Most field corn grown in the US ranges from 80+ days to 118+.
 
We typically grow 108-116 day corn. Because we have a longer growing season in Missouri we can plant corn with longer growing season but this also comes with risk of not drying down quickly enough in the fall - we need the corn to be dry before the first frost. 
 
Corn that hasn't dried down soon enough runs the potential of being damaged in the field or in storage and will not be a quality product.

I also wanted a trait called BT - this is another GMO developed trait.   The BT trait (which was taken from a soil bacterium) is deadly to European corn boer - a nasty pest that can reduce a corn field to nothing.  The trait eliminates the need for us to use any routine spray insecticide!
 
BT  is actually a very selective trait - it's only deadly to pests within the caterpillar family.  Chemical sprays we had to use before BT traits were deadly to nearly all insects, something we now recognize as being harmful to the ecosystem surrounding our farms.    The BT trait very much compliments the ecological plan on our farm!
 
With all that in mind, I selected a popular Pfister Hybrid for our growing area - Pfister 2770.  

Bag of Pfister 2770 seed corn. Seed corn is sold with attached labels that very clearly define exactly what traits the seed carries.

Selecting the time to plant is a gamble each year.  Getting corn in the ground as early as possible allows a farmer to take advantage of early spring rains.  But getting in too early can mean corn is washed away from hard rains, flooded out, or it turns off cold and the corn simply doesn't come up.
 
We have to wait for the soil to reach certain temperatures and also want to do our best to ensure the corn will have adequate moisture during pollination.
 
With all that in mind, we pulled the trigger and decided to start planting.  Matt actually started planting corn a few weeks ago but my 60 acres was the last up. 
 
Matt helped me to navigate the John Deere 8200 with John Deere 1780 split row planter.  We have a smaller planter by modern standards - 12 rows at a time.  Some farmers today plant with 48 row planters!

Matt actually left me alone in the cab long enough to take my picture!

Our tractor has several monitors in the cab that help us to make sure the right number of seeds are being planted in the right spot.  We also have "automatic row shut off" which uses GPS technology to make sure we do not plant over anywhere we have already planted.  When we get to end rows the planter boxes can shut off a single row at a time to ensure we do not use any more seed than necessary!

This screen provides us feedback on the seed population.

This screen shows us the entire field and where we have planted. The green boxes behind the tractor (yellow triangle) also turn grey as they shut off to avoid any over planting.

This monitor works with the auto-steer to ensure GPS straight rows!

This screen provides visual feedback as seeds come out of the planter into the ground.

This was a pretty exciting day for me!  Matt is putting a rain gauge up right next to #My60Acres so I can monitor rain fall the rest of the growing season!
 
Stay tuned to see my corn come out of the ground! 

Papa Steve took the boys for a few hours so Matt could help me plant.