A trip back in time gives us this glimpse of a promotional mailer from the Reist Seed Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Costing the company 2 cents to mail, it’s basically a simple fold of a card-stock quality of paper with black ink and a red seal. Nothing special. And it includes the actual seed prices. That kind of information today, in the year 2020, is a guarded secret. Competitive intel like that, especially if discovered early in the sales season, causes marketing specialists to drool on themselves. This particular one is dated August 15th. Announcing prices in August would be extraordinarily early for any of today’s seed corn companies.
“Free” cotton bags (1 bushel capacity) were an enticement. Certainly reusable and environmentally friendly.
Notice that both open pollinated varieties and hybrids were available, but at a price difference of roughly $3 per bushel sack of seed. It was well established by the mid-1940s that significant yield increases could be realized planting hybrid seed. Perhaps the adoption curve was not quite as strong in some regions so both types were still offered after WWII. Also of interest is the availability of “early husking” varieties (this would likely include existing hybrids that have the characteristics that make an ear of corn suitable for hand husking, such as high ear placement, excellent standability and loose husks).
Lastly, the offering of formaldehyde and tobacco dust can not go unnoticed. These types of “pesticides” seem foreign today but are unique to an era that was growing by leaps and bounds in the post-war era and did so without much government oversight. I must admit, however, that I have no idea how one applies tobacco dust!
So many folks came before us. In reverence, I always find it fascinating to look back and study the progression of technology.
Going through some files I came across a summary that I had put together about the adoption rate of hybrid corn in Greene County, Iowa. It was based on a survey of growers that asked about the factors that influenced them to use hybrid seed (versus saved seed from open pollinated plants) and how long it took for them to plant it on all their acres.
This summary is adapted from a 1943 article, The Diffusion of Hybrid Seed Corn in Two Iowa Communities and was published in Rural Sociology by authors B. Ryan and N. Gross. Here are their basic findings:
The authors surveyed 257 farmers to explore how they first learned about hybrid corn, the sources from which they gathered information about the merits and performance of hybrid seed and how long it took for them to adopt it on 100% of their acreage.
On average, it took approximately five years to adopt hybrid corn after first learning of it. After first using it on the farm, it took only about three years to adopt it on 100% of their acreage.
The farmers “original” knowledge, or awareness, of hybrid corn came primarily from salesmen (49% of the farmers cited salesmen), neighbors (14.6%), Farm Journal magazine (10.7%), radio advertising (10.3%), relatives (3.5%) and the Extension Service (2.8%).
The farmers “most influential” source for causing them to plant hybrid corn were the neighbors (45.5% citing them as most influential) with salesmen a relatively close second (32.0%). All other sources registered less than 7%.
80% of the adoption of hybrid corn occurred in approx. 5 years, from 1933 to 1939 (see figure below).
Very few technologies in any sector of life see an adoption rate like this. It is quite remarkable, really. Similar acceptance was seen with specific biotech traits in plants but readers will be hard pressed to list many others, especially in agriculture. Horses to tractors? Nitrogen fertilizer usage after WWII? Atrazine or 2,4-D in the 1950s or 1960s? Wouldn’t it be fun to sit down with Dad or Grandpa and hear about what they experienced?
There are countless books and articles in the public domain about hybrid corn. The people, the seed, the science – it’s all out there for the curious to consume. Enjoy!
Hybrid corn is the result of a cross of inbred parents – a male that provides the pollen and the female that produces silks and ultimately the ear. The ear is then processed through a series of steps in large seed production plants. For North America, most of the production fields are scattered throughout three or four states in the Midwest region. This is done to allow handling of large volumes of various hybrids and to spread out risk associated with damaging weather events.
The technologies involved in this process are fascinating and complex and have evolved over time. For brands like Pioneer and Dekalb, sales have increased substantially since they entered the business in the 1920s – from a few dozen bushel sacks of seed in the beginning to several million bags and boxes in North America alone. When you consider that hybrid seed production can be much less than half of commercial grain production, you realize the scale in acres and processing that are needed to source farmers their seed for planting season.
80,000 kernel count bags (“80K units”) have been the standard for years. Large boxes that can hold up to 50 units are also used for large capacity planters.
Because of the Midwestern location of most production fields and processing plants, most growers across the south and southwest have never seen a seed production plant or the processes involved. The production plants can be very large and use sophisticated scheduling and throughput strategies to ensure efficiency but yet with a final goal of producing high quality seed. It is never lost on production plant employees that seed is a living organism. It has to be handled in a way that allows growers to plant it five or more months later with the expectation of near perfect germination and growth.
A modern Pioneer Hi-Bred seed production plant in Iowa (2019).
Pioneer Hi-Bred (Corteva AgriScience) has created an animation (see below) that shows the steps involved in processing hybrid seed corn. Different from commercial corn grain production, hybrid seed corn is harvested on the ear, complete with husk (similar to sweet corn) with grain moisture that is often over 40 percent. Special harvesters load trucks with whole ears and the trucks then transport them to the processing plant. After a myriad of processes, high quality seed is bagged or boxed and stored in refrigeration. There, it awaits a customer order after which it’s shipped to the seed dealership or direct to the farm.
An animated overview of a how seed corn is processed. Courtesy of Pioneer Hi-Bred, Corteva AgriScience.
Obviously there’s a great deal of expense and expertise involved. Pioneer Hi-Bred holds several patents for processes and machinery that are highly specialized. It’s a source of pride knowing that very few issues arise due to seed quality issues. Production goals are high with seed germination almost always in the mid to high 90s (percent of seed that germinates) for seed corn. Of course, the environment in which the seed is planted can have a significant impact on germination and early season growth, but Pioneer Hi-Bred has done everything it can up to that point to ensure success.
An Essay on the Rise and Fall of Hybrids in the Seed Business
Since the beginning of hybrid corn development in the early 1900s, breeders have made step changes in product performance. (A step change is where the new hybrid is not just a little better than the previous generation of products but so much better that growers will demand only that hybrid.) These changes might encompass significant improvements in disease tolerance, lodging or insect resistance and of course, yield. Sometimes the step change is extraordinary. The seed industry has seen this over the years where a hybrid performs at such a high level that it takes traditional breeding programs literally years, sometimes decades, to catch up to it. Pioneer Hi-Bred has a wonderful history of these, most notable being corn hybrid Pioneer® brand 3394 (early 1990s) and sorghum hybrid Pioneer® brand 84G62 (late 1990s).
Understandably, growers can become emotionally attached to these extraordinary hybrids. After all, their success is tied to the performance of the products they plant. Yes, it’s mostly yield that drives this success, but not just yield in one year – yield across multiple years. In the seed industry, we describe a hybrid that yields consistently over time and across environments as “stable.” As an experienced agronomist with over 20 years of experience, stable hybrids are few and far between. These are the hybrids that growers request for many years knowing that the hybrid will perform and that they won’t have to worry about whether the latest and greatest new product will let them down. In a business that’s often “year to year,” this stability is often welcomed. It’s peace of mind.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which side of the ledger you’re on, stability is not always the driving factor in selling hybrids. It’s no secret that seed companies will literally introduce and drop a hybrid after only one year. This speaks to the rapid improvements in breeding science but also the drive for yield and financial success in a very competitive market place. So, hybrids that are stable – meaning, not always winning the yield contest but certainly above average – are not always in demand. This makes life difficult for a seed company in deciding what to grow for the next selling season.
After harvest, a seed company must decide what hybrids to produce the following summer in order to have the seed supply needed for their customers to plant in the spring more than a year later. To do this, they must predict what hybrids their customers will likely buy for the following year. But growers often base their purchase decisions on the current year’s performance and don’t always consider previous years. Weather plays a key role in product performance but no two years are alike and the best hybrid this year might not be the best next year. As you might imagine, it’s very difficult to predict which hybrids will perform best when you don’t know what the weather will bring! Given this, stability seems like a good thing, doesn’t it?
The complexity of growing hybrid seed is nearly overwhelming. Below is an example of a corn hybrid that’s widely adapted (image courtesy of Pioneer Hi-Bred) that literally has 221 variations. For this hybrid, there are nine versions of trait offerings for various market opportunities. A few examples include a “conventional” version – no traits for the organic market; an herbicide tolerant version – no insect traits but needed for refuge acres and a below-ground insect protection version for areas with known corn rootworm pressure. Next are seed treatments – various rates of insecticide, formulations, active ingredients, etc. Then there are several packaging options of which the most common are boxes and bags but imagine various sizes of these units to accommodate field research needs. My personal favorite is the last tier which is seed size – rounds and flats of which there are small, medium and large. Depending on the hybrid, there can also be extra small and extra large. Today’s high-tech planters can often be fickle about seed size. Take my word for it, you can have all the right genetics, traits, seed treatments and packaging but if you don’t have the right seed size for the planter, you can lose the sale! Seed size is mostly determined by genetics but can be manipulated to a certain degree by management. Historically, hybrids have been dropped because they consistently produced seed that was either too small or too large.
This complexity in seed offerings for the grower has value. A seed company is a business and assigns a cost to every one of the 221 variations in this example. It must do this to keep track of production costs and understand what “value” each variation contributes to the overall picture. So, what happens when a hybrid doesn’t perform to expectations and growers decide to move on? Demand drops and now the cost of producing these variations starts to increase. (Imagine growing seed based on demand that fizzles for one reason or another – you now have a bunch of processed seed sitting in storage that nobody wants.) Again, this is a business. Just as every company assigns a cost to each variation, they also assign a threshold cost where it doesn’t make sense to continue producing it.
As you observe sales of seed over time, you’ll notice that all hybrids have a “lifecycle.” If they make the cut after the first year, sales grow for a time (they’re new and exciting), then stabilize (above-average but starting to fall behind), then drop (stable yield but just simply getting left behind by newer genetics). Not long after the final stage, they are no longer produced. The decision to drop a hybrid is not easy. Typically, near the end of a hybrid’s lifecycle, production acres (the production fields where the male and female inbreds are grown to produce the hybrid seed) become more difficult to manage (small acreage needed at this point) and variability in production per acre tends to go up. Thus, production costs also go up.
Finally, regional differences (a hybrid does well in one area but not others) can often accelerate a product’s lifecycle. This, honestly, is the demise of most hybrids in the industry. When a hybrid is widely adapted – grown on a lot of acres by a lot of producers – the production process is more efficient and frankly, more profitable. But when demand drops quickly, as might be the case when a large growing area completely walks away from a hybrid, a decision to keep producing that hybrid must be evaluated even knowing that it might still be one of the best performers in other areas of the country.
The seed business is complex, business-driven and very emotional. Emotions around a hybrid can be strong as growers gain an affinity for something that feels like family. Livelihoods thrive on the success of hybrid seed production and seed company employees often feel equally emotional at the loss of hybrids. Given all of this, there’s an axiom about the seed business that I often share with customers: “Don’t fall in love with this hybrid. There’s a good chance it’ll be gone next year.”
Remember when I said I don’t farm for a living; rather, I work with farmers? Well, this is one of those blogs where it will be easy to say, “if you think you know so damn much, why don’t you farm for a living rather than sit around and tell us what to do?” That’s a fair retort. But I will ignore it for now.
Risk. Risk management. Crop rotation, tillage system, hybrid selection, planting date – these are the major components of your crop production plan that the agronomist knows and worries more about than other important facets of successful farming. Each has it’s own degree of risk and, depending where on the earth you are farming, that risk might be more or less.
Monoculture (producing the same crop specie on the same land for consecutive years) is known to reduce yield potential. For example, in the south, continues cotton can lead to establishment of root rot that can be difficult to manage in future crops. Continuous corn is almost always less productive than corn in rotation and can lead to establishment of corn rootworm populations – another problem that can be difficult to control. In trying to maximize profit it’s easy to see that future income potential could be jeopardized with the decision to plant continuous crops.
Within a crop, agronomists also recommend spreading out maturity and genetic diversity. NEVER plant all your acres to one hybrid or variety. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. I get it that you might do that if you’re a smaller farmer with few acres; but for larger operators – NEVER. You know the land – some acres are more productive than others; some drought prone, some flood prone, etc. Plant the right hybrid on the right acre. Seed company personnel have knowledge and wisdom and usually know their products like they know their kids. Lean on them for help!
Dr. Matt Montgomery, Pioneer Hi-Bred agronomist up in Illinois, posted this image in a tweet that makes a key point. One of my recommendations every year in Texas is to spread out maturities. This can spread out harvest but more importantly it spreads out the timing of when the crop is flowering and filling seed. Regardless of crop, this is an important strategy to mitigate production risk that can be caused by excessive heat or drought – both very prevalent throughout central and south Texas. However, when the latter part of the growing season is favorable, fuller maturity hybrids almost always out-yield the earlier maturities, sometimes significantly. Balance expectations while also controlling risk!
We are in a very wet cycle right now throughout the eastern half of Texas and it’s likely going to push our planting dates later than desired. (For corn, crop insurance deadlines are usually much later than the ideal window for maximizing yield potential.) Also, with the wet winter, very few acres have been worked and when it does dry out there won’t be much time to do anything other than plant. Remember, the highest yield potential for the year almost always coincides with the first planting – SO DON’T MESS THAT UP. Take the time to get the seedbed right and hopefully you won’t spend the rest of the summer looking at an ugly crop and hating yourself.
Risk management is often associated with financial risk. That’s important but managing stress in our lives is also important. Think about how the factors I talked about affect your life – can we mitigate “personal risk” associated with stress by managing things differently, for the better. I believe so.
The Refined Woodworking Agronomist 