Pioneer Hi-Bred’s big announcement at the 2011 Farm Progress Show was a new program focused on evaluating innovative production practices on a local basis through a national network of agronomy trial managers (ATMs).

“The focus is really local,” says Curt Clausen, Pioneer agronomy sciences director. “It’s really about local crop management, innovation and knowledge.”

Pioneer is doubling the number of ATMs currently in the field to over 40 in the next three years. “This is the next level of service to our customers,” Curt said during the Pioneer press conference at FPS.

Listen to Curt’s press comments, introduced by Pioneer’s Jerry Harrington, here. Curt Clausen of Pioneer

One of the real live Pioneer ATMs out in the field is Jake Vossenkemper from the Decatur area, who says growers have hundreds of agronomy questions that they want answered. “They want to do the best job they can just like everyone else and our job is to step in and help them answer those questions,” Jake says.

Jake says Pioneer has been performing some specific experiments in certain regions, like an intensive soybean management experiment to look at factors that have been shown to consistently increase soybean yields. “Some of those factors include seed treatments, foliar applied pesticides and fungicides, as well as planting date,” he said.

Listen to Jake’s comments here. Pioneer ATM Jake Vossenkemper

2011 Farm Progress Show Photo Album