Planting - Farmer Focus

Planting is by most accounts the most important operation to execute successfully in order to harvest a good crop. No one knows this better than the farmers who plant the crops season after season. In this first episode of the Planting Technology Series, we welcome Don Batie to the FarmBits podcast. Don farms corn and soybeans on primarily irrigated land near Lexington, NE. As an active research partner with the Nebraska On-Farm Research Network, Don has completed several planting-focused studies exploring new planting technologies like active downforce and appropriate seeding rates, particularly for soybean crops. In this episode, Don shares about his experiences with these studies, as well as his priorities for his planting operation, how he decides to explore and evaluate new practices or technologies, and what he is excited about in the future of planting technologies. For more from Don, follow him on Twitter - he consistently puts out good content! Getting a farmer's perspective on planting is important for putting the rest of this series into context, and there are more episodes to come exploring some of the topics that come up in this interview.