The yield monitor in your combine can provide good insight on how many bushels you made. Getting out of the cab can help tell you why.
That distinction could be worth real money as growers make decisions for 2027, according to national yield contest standouts David Hula and Randy Dowdy. They say the field trials, hybrid comparisons and management changes farmers established this year are delivering the information needed to decide what stays, what goes and what needs another look next season.
But, they add, the information works only if growers take time to study their crop results.
Don’t Waste a Year’s Worth of Plot Work
Hula, based near Charles City, Va., says too many farmers lose sight of their on-farm tests when harvest pressures hit. After months of planning, planting and documenting trials, the temptation is to keep the combine moving when harvest is falling behind.
“We do a good job putting out test plots … and then we get in the harvest time, and everybody gets hurried trying to beat a rain or something,” Hula says. “And then we forget we had plots out there.”
The answer, he says, is to stop thinking of harvest as simply collecting bushels. It’s also the opportunity to determine where those bushels came from.
Hula says his agronomist, Paul Bodenstein, puts the question this way: “Don’t talk about just that you got six more bushels — how did you capture those six bushels?”
Determining the answer could require getting out of the combine and looking closely at the crop. It’s what Hula does on a regular basis.
“There’s nothing wrong with stopping the combine and looking and seeing,” Hula says. “I’m going to grab them six ears, throw them in a bucket, and then when I get into the other treatment, grab a half a dozen more ears, so I can see where yield’s captured.”
That kind of hands-on comparison can help explain differences that a yield monitor alone cannot. It also turns the results from this year’s plot work into something more valuable: information that can shape the next crop.
“We need to take this chance to develop a plan now for 2027,” Hula says. “If we miss it, then we’re going to be a ‘next year person.’”
Let the Data Drive 2027 Decisions
That same discipline should carry into decisions about selecting seed and other inputs, says Dowdy, based near Valdosta, Ga.
He believes growers will hear plenty of claims this fall about the newest and greatest available products. But Dowdy says his own experience this year shows why farmers need to put those claims to the test on their own farms.
“Every seed salesman that brought me seed this year said this is their latest and greatest, and that it’s really doing great,” Dowdy recalls. “And I saw up to 150-bushel swings in fields, farming on my soils the way I do things.”
That’s why he considers side-by-side plots and on-farm comparisons invaluable.
“All these plots are important,” Dowdy says. “It’s invaluable because what I have understood, and I believe wholeheartedly, a farmer will never cut out what he or she knows pays.”
As growers face potentially higher input costs in 2027, knowing which practices actually returned a profit this year could become even more important.
Finish Soybeans Before Weather Finishes Them
While harvest data can help shape next year’s decisions, Dowdy says some soybean growers have a more immediate concern: getting mature beans out of the field before prolonged wet weather takes its toll.
In parts of Georgia, he says, nearly a “month of rain” has left some ready-to-harvest soybeans vulnerable to deterioration.
“I’ve had areas, some of my farms, where soybeans were ready to harvest, and it has rained almost 30 days straight,” Dowdy says. “The beans are having a tendency to want to rot right before our eyes, and that is not good.”
Indeterminate soybeans that remain in the field are particularly vulnerable, he says.
“A lot of the indeterminate beans are either harvested or need to be harvested,” Dowdy says. “Any that needs to be harvested’s catching it on the chin.”
Where conditions allow, getting mature soybeans harvested becomes more than a scheduling decision, he adds. It’s a way to protect yield that’s already been made.
Test Stress Tools Before Committing
The 2026 growing season has given Hula an opportunity to evaluate products designed to help crops manage stress.
He has been pulling tissue samples and testing kelp-based products and biologicals.
“We’re hearing a lot about these kelp products out there, that they are something that help alleviate stress, and we had plenty of stress this year,” Hula says.
But he cautions growers against treating all products in a category as interchangeable and that not all kelps are created equal. That’s why he advocates putting products through on-farm trials rather than making decisions based on industry buzz.
“You got to do your own trials,” he says.
His trials this year also included in-furrow biological products designed to improve crop establishment and root development. The goal is the same as with seed and other inputs, Hula notes: determine what actually pays under his farm conditions before committing to it for another season.
Don’t Let Spring Work Go to Waste
For Dowdy, the biggest mistake may be conducting a good trial in the spring and then failing to finish the job in the fall.
“You put them in the ground, you document it,” he says. “Well, if you don’t follow through in the fall, everything that you did in the spring is wasted.”
That makes harvest the final—and perhaps most important—step in the year’s research process.
Dowdy recalls a line from a minister that he says applies to farm management, too: “Hell will be paved with good intentions.”
“Hope’s a strategy, but it’s not a good one,” Dowdy says. “We got to have data to make better decisions.”
Hear the latest Breaking Barriers With R&D conversation between Dowdy, Hula and Chip Flory on AgriTalk at the link below:
