One of the people bringing technology to farmers in the field here at the Farm Science Review is Agrow/Dekalb Field Advisor, Troy Putnam (pictured on the Monsanto Mobile Greenhouse).

Troy says that the exhibit is helping promote the Roundup Ready 2 Yield launch. He describes it as second generation technology that will be in the Asgrow line. Farmers, he says, have seen great yield increases in corn over the years and they have been looking for the same in soybeans. “Roundup Ready 2 Yield will raise that bar and you’ve heard the numbers 7-11% in some of our research trials. We’re so excited about it that we’ll have a couple million acres in the launch for 2009.” Troy says there’s a plan in place to distribute out different varieties to various regions based on maturity, soybean volume and demand of the current Roundup Ready line.

When it comes to advantages of the new technology he says it will mean more beans per plant. An example he sites is that if you plant 180,000 plants/acre and get just one more bean per plant then you’ll have one additional bushel of yield for that acre. So increasing the number of beans on the plant has a major impact on yield.

Troy also talks about their Mobile Greenhouse which he says takes farmers through the process of looking at conventional beans through Roundup beans.

You can listen to my interview with Troy here: fsr-08-putnam.mp3

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