The biggest mistake growers and agronomists can make this season is falling behind in scouting, planning and execution, according to Mark Herz, agronomy technical specialist at CHS. He offers three priorities to help shape a strong scouting approach.
1. Know Your History
“Be attentive to historical risk, and be fully aware of the greatest risks from pests in your fields,” he says. “Taking past learnings and applying them to current conditions is going to help you utilize that experience and make some good decisions.”
2. Understand the Importance of This Growth Stage
“These crops are growing like teenagers right now,” he says. “They’re fully vegetative, and they’re adding energy at a very fast rate. That’s why they’re growing so fast. That energy is going to get stored in the plant and later redistributed and utilized to fill grain. That’s why it’s so important for a healthy crop during this growth stage: to stack as much energy as it can for the grain-fill period.”
3. Take It Step by Step
“Take a grounded approach and not get overwhelmed. Just focus on a primary threat and then go from there. One step at a time,” Herz says.
Now Is the Time to Act
The longer growers and agronomists wait, Herz says, the bigger the problem can become.
“When a problem is small — whether it’s a disease, weed or bug — and we catch it early, jump on top of it, and get it taken care of, it’s going to take much less pesticide and much less aggressive measures,” he says. “If we let it become a problem, now you’re going to throw a lot of pesticides at it and hope for the best. That’s going to affect the safety and stewardship components.”
So far this season, tar spot is top of mind for Herz.
“It’s on everyone’s mind. It’s relatively new, very aggressive, very fast-moving, and very devastating. So it’s not something to take lightly,” he says. “The right combination of temperature and humidity can absolutely allow this disease to blow up, and we’ve seen that in past years.”
Because tar spot behaves differently than more familiar diseases, Herz says it requires close attention, especially in two areas:
- A short latent period. “It can keep cycling and cycling until it gets out of hand.”
- Management complexity. “Breeders are screening for tar spot in their hybrids, in the new hybrids they’re coming out with, so that’s helping. We do have foliar fungicides that can have some impact on it too.”
Herz notes that tar spot is not the only issue on the radar, and scouting priorities will vary by region.
“Some people deal with spider mites really badly. Some people deal with gray leaf spot. There are other regional issues as well,” he says. “We’re definitely not too late right now, but if you think, ‘I’ve got plenty of time,’ I think you’re going to be wrong. Stay on top of it. Protect that investment.”
Get Your Game Plan in Place
While every farm has its own scouting protocol — whether growers handle it themselves or rely on an agronomist or service provider — Herz advocates for a clear communication plan among the people scouting, making decisions and carrying out applications.
“I’m big on communication,” he says. “If there are two entities working together and relying on each other, communicate. Sit down and go through intentions, expectations, where you think the needs are going to be, the logistics, how often, what the cadence is, and what growth stages you need to be looking at.”
He adds that overcommunication is better than silence. Even an update that no issues were found, along with a timeline for the next scouting pass, can be valuable.
Embracing Tools Can Improve Results
Technology in this space is advancing quickly. Herz points to drone-based imagery as one example. Where earlier tools may have been limited to broader resolution, today’s systems can capture highly detailed information — even identifying something as small as a business card under a crop canopy.
He says those tools are making agronomists and farmers more efficient, not replacing them.
“AI can also give you a lot of great information. It can do identification,” he says. “When I was learning, it took me about three years to identify weeds. It was a laborious process. Now I can load an app in 15 seconds, snap a picture, and it tells me what I have. You still have to ground-truth it, so to speak, but it makes you so much more efficient at your job.”
At CHS, Herz says digital tools are helping agronomists gather more information and make better recommendations.
“Our agronomists leverage digital tools quite a bit,” he says. “That helps them be efficient. Ultimately, it’s going to help them make accurate, well-thought-out recommendations to growers.”
For Herz, the choice between technology and boots on the ground is not either/or.
“I recommend using both approaches,” he says. “Use the drone and use the technology to do the heavy lifting. It’s going to collect a lot of data for you. A drone can cover every square inch of a field.”
He says drones can help map pressures from insects, diseases and weeds, but field-level expertise still matters.
“Then, get out to that field, go to that hotspot, and make an evaluation,” he says. “The technology tells you where to look, but you still can’t take the human part out of it — that expertise still matters.”
That same data-first mindset also shapes Herz’s work in product development at CHS. He says his team studies new products closely, then puts them through replicated trials to see what the data shows across multiple years and locations.
“For me, when it comes to data versus gut feel, you still have to balance both, but you’ve got to utilize the data,” he says. “The data is going to remove the emotion and bias that you get from gut feel. It allows you to think more critically about how to make the best decision.”
In the end, Herz says the goal is the same: use objective, science-based information to make better decisions, stay ahead of problems and protect the crop’s potential.
