Sucessful results achieved through Great Lakes Grain first Crop Assessment Tour

A three day odyssey across southern and mid-western Ontario concluded on Aug. 27 where FS agronomy and grain staff went on a crop scouting blitz capturing new field data to analyse and share with producers.

The Great Lakes Grain Crop Assessment Tour was a team effort that involved 20 two-men teams made up of FS crop specialists, certified crop specialists, customer service managers from FS PARTNERS and AGRIS Co-operative as well as grain originators from Great Lakes Grain.

  

Don Kabbes, marketing development manager for Great Lakes Grain reports that at each stop there was a soybean and corn field in close proximity. Ten teams scouted soybeans while the other 10 teams scouted corn. “On the first night of the tour we trained for yield estimation protocols for corn and soybeans so that all teams observed and recorded data consistently throughout the tour stops,” added Kabbes.

A total of 17 stops resulted in 2,800 corn and 1,575 soybean yield checks. “This experience provided the opportunity for new and seasoned staff to learn together while raising the bar on cropping knowledge,” says Dale Cowan, senior agronomist for Southern Co-operative Services. Don McLean, agronomist for FS PARTNERS added that “this type of mentoring, sharing, teaching and observing crop conditions in our trading areas provided invaluable opportunities to sharpen our skills.”

The tour’s findings were reported daily through video footage on AGRIS Co-operative's and Great Lakes Grain's web sites giving producers a personal close-up view of the daily activities and findings as they happened.

As a follow up, FS crop specialists will continue to scout an additional five corn and soybean sites together with their growers as a whole field assessment. This will provide an additional 200 yield data points to enhance the tour’s current collection.

More follow up videos will be posted to the Great Lakes Grain, FS PARTNERS and AGRIS Co-operative websites over the next few weeks. “This tour provided us with a wonderful opportunity to learn to become better agronomists who in turn will help us to help our customers become better farmers,” says McLean.

The Crop Assessment tour was generously sponsored by Dekalb Seeds, Syngenta Crop Protection and GROWMARK, Inc.

The preliminary results from the Great Lakes Grain Crop Assessment Tour are estimations only and not final research data, but rather observations. To read about the data results collected from the tour, please visit http://www.greatlakesgrain.com/, or http://www.agris.coop/

(Photo above) Vicky Michinski, zone grain originator with Great Lakes Grain and Bill Dunbar, FS PARTNERS director of operations scout for European Cut Worm at Crop Assesment Tour.