- The 2023 National Corn Yield Contest (NCYC) is open and entrants will contribute their expertise and innovation to create a pool of agronomic knowledge that has been almost six decades in the making. This year, the contest has added a Nitrogen Management class. This new pilot class is open to the first 100 entries from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio or Wisconsin. Get more information.
- Syngenta Crop Protection, a global leader in agricultural innovation, today announced its acquisition of Macspred Australia, a specialist in weed management for the forestry, roads, rail, utilities and infrastructure sectors. The acquisition marks Syngenta’s entry – through its Professional Solutions business – into the forestry products and vegetation markets. It also secures Syngenta’s ability to service both large-scale commercial plantation customers, as well as a growing farm forestry clientele focused on improving financial sustainability and environmental biodiversity on the farm.
- Growers are now spending an average of $500,000 a year on automation in response to the persistent ag labor shortage, according to the second Specialty Crop Automation Report commissioned by Western Growers. The report, which tracks and measures industry progress in harvest automation across the fresh produce industry, is part of WG’s Global Harvest Automation Initiative, which aims to accelerate ag automation by 50 percent in 10 years.
- John Deere has entered into an allied agreement with PCT Agcloud to enable grain and cotton farmers to take John Deere Operations Center™ data and seamlessly share it with PCT Agcloud. The allied agreement enables small grains, corn and soybean growers that use HarvestLab™ 3000 Grain Sensing to generate insights and action through Protein Pro powered by PCT Agcloud. Protein Pro delivers automated cleaning, editing, multiple machine corrections, intersecting zone creation, and nitrogen removal and product replacement data to Operations Center.
- Farmers across Illinois now have access to a new Crop Report tool developed by the Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) Agronomy team and the ILSoyAdvisor online platform. The resource enables growers to better manage their soybean, corn and wheat crops. From field conditions to crop progress, disease alerts, and pest sightings, the Online Crop Report provides farmers with facts and strategic analysis of relevant information that impacts their farms.
- The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) announced its newly elected leaders for the next office term, beginning January 2024. President-Elect Samira Daroub, director for the Everglades Research and Education Center (EREC) and department distance education coordinator for the Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences (SWES) department at the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
- The Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) announced its newly elected leaders for the next office term, beginning January 2024. President-Elect is Mark E. Sorrells, who earned his Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and is a professor in the Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics at Cornell University.
