What causes farmers the most headaches? That’s what BASF Crop Protection set out to determine in a survey they recently completed and released at the Ag Media Summit in St. Paul earlier this week.

More than 600 corn, hay, soybean and wheat growers from 44 states participated in the survey, which questioned them about their concerns about the future and specific challenges they face with regard to crop production.

According to BASF Technical Services Regional Manager Dr. Gary Fellows (pictured center) says the survey asked farmers their major concerns looking ahead in the next five years. “Two of those, which occupied them 52 percent of the time, was controlling input costs and maximizing yield,” Gary says. Three other concerns the farmers mentioned were the future of their farm, land issues, and whether they want to expand.

The rest of the survey asked growers about the challenges they face, and they identified three major areas – stress tolerance of crops, unpredictable weather, and residual control of weeds. Fifty-four percent of growers indicated that disease pressure is a major concern and 75 percent of growers indicated that stress tolerance of crops is a difficult issue to manage.

Gary says that BASF already offers products, like Headline and Kixor, that can help growers meet the challenges they face. But they survey helped them to make sure they are looking for the right products down the road. “And we’re pretty excited, because in the next four years we have 28 new products we should be launching, with nine brand new active ingredients,” said Gary.

Listen to or download Chuck’s interview with Gary Fellows from AMS here:
Gary Fellows Interview