Twenty years ago, BASF turned the concept of “seeing is believing” on its head when it launched Headline, a product Scott Kay describes as the first plant health fungicide for row crops.
The concept then and now is farmers who use a fungicide proactively before they see a problem in their fields will prevent crop damage and protect yield potential.
The concept and results have resonated with many growers – 45% of U.S. corn and soybean acres are treated annually with fungicide. Yet 55% of row-crop acres are not.
“In 2024, there were 115 million acres that went unprotected,” said Kay, vice president, U.S. Agricultural Solutions, BASF.
Kay and his colleagues have pondered the question of why so many acres are untreated?
“The only answer we can come up with to that is that farmers haven’t seen real results and real benefits in their own field,”he said.
This season Kay and team plan to address those unprotected acres with their new Real Results Yield Challenge program, which will be based on large-scale field trials.
“These field trials will be 10, 20, 40 acres, something like that, enough so that farmers can see the performance results of fungicides on their own farms,” Kay said earlier this week during the 2025 BASF Behind The Science event at Commodity Classic.
Depending on farmers’ input, Kay said the trials will be designed to include head-to-head comparisons of BASF products against competitive brands, along with comparisons to untreated checks.
“In head-to-head trials versus our No. 1 competitor, we’ve seen a 7-bu. advantage in corn and a 10-bu. advantage in untreated acres,” Kay said. “In soybeans we’ve seen a 2.5-bu. advantage over our competitors and close to 5 bu. over untreated soybeans.”
Yield Results Can Cover Application Costs
The additional yield gained from fungicide use will more than cover the investment of a $15 to $20 per acre application of product, Kay noted .
“With farmers needing to protect their yields in these low commodity times, we need to have more bushels with a greater ROI, and we believe this is one way we can help farmers can achieve that,” Kay said.
While the company is finetuning the details on how the Real Results Yield Challenge program will work, it will start working with ag retailers and BASF field representatives in the next week to identify farmers who would be interested in having a fungicide trial set up on their farm.
Kay would encourage farmers who are interested in participating in the program this season to reach out to their local BASF representative and ag retailer for more information.
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