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With wet, and/or snow-covered soils predominating from Missouri to Minnesota well beyond mid-March this year, Midwestern farmers are understandably anxious about the odds for timely corn planting. However, the best advice to corn growers for now is preparation and patience, according to Jeff Coulter, University of Minnesota, and Bill Wiebold, University of Missouri, Extension corn agronomists....More

Whether it’s irrigated growers in Texas or the sometimes-water-logged Delta or other deep-South producers, southern farmers are likely sticking with traditional maturity groups after trying different ones to dodge one weather problem or another....More

Five major U.S. trade associations whose member companies store, handle, process and export corn and corn products say they are deeply disappointed in the decision by the USDA to deregulate without conditions a new biotechnology-enhanced corn trait engineered to enhance ethanol production....More

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is announcing its decision to deregulate corn genetically engineered (GE) to produce a common enzyme called alpha-amylase that breaks down starch into sugar, thereby facilitating a vital step in ethanol production....More

DuPont (Pioneer Hi-Bred) and Syngenta developed the new varieties through traditional breeding techniques – with a little advanced technology thrown in to speed the process of picking which parent plants to try....More

Monsanto's Roundup Ready 1 (RR1) soybean trait patent does not expire until 2014, but the Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) urges the state's farmers to explore now what the change could mean for their operations....More

Father knows best. That’s why – when it comes to selecting soybean varieties – Dick Mahoney gets advice from his son. Dick, 57, farms in west-central Minnesota. His son John, 34, is an agronomist for Centrol Crop Consulting. Dick has been farming for 35 years and has plenty of experience choosing seeds. But the speed of genetic advances makes variety selection increasingly complex, he says. And rising seed costs put more on the line than ever before....More

Although results of the 2010 Ohio Corn Performance Trials (and those of neighboring states) have yet to be published, many growers are already making decisions about hybrids to plant in 2011. Hybrid selection is one of the most important management decisions a corn grower makes each year. It's a decision that warrants careful a comparison of performance data. It should not be made in haste or based on limited data.  ...More

The U.S. soybean industry exports more than half of its annual production.  Without these exports – valued most recently at $16 billion – fewer profit opportunities would exist for U.S. soybean farmers. To help ensure these export markets, it’s important to give international customers what they demand....More

Thanks to Bt corn hybrids and several wet springs, corn rootworm populations are low in Indiana again this year, which...More