Since the students did such a great job of blogging the AGMasters Conference, I am just going to re-post a few of their posts here, instead of doing it myself. See photos from the conference on the AGMasters Photo Album
This one was written by Megan Ott and Jared Roskamp:
Participants from this year’s AGMasters Conference had the privilege to gain insight on the efforts in genetics and agronomy efforts to increase corn yields. Greg Luce from Pioneer Hybrids provided coming news on improvements in corn production. With a growing population and growing demand of food production, farmers have to realize they need to produce more on what land we already have. This provides a great demand and challenge for producers in agriculture to increase our yields to feed the world.
Luce stated “One of the most important things we can do as producers is to have the right products on the right acres to optimize our yields.” In order to raise optimum yields, producers are at the advantage of having the improved genetic selection for seed corn. With new technology developed including stress tolerant corn, higher populations can be planted as a result of this new development.
With a competitive seed market as we have today, companies are developing diverse products in order to keep up with the growing demand in the agriculture industry. Such genetic diversity is there to select superior hybrids that exhibit drought tolerance, high nitrogen efficiency and even disease and insect resistance.
Listen to or download the interview with Greg Luce below: