Farmer success a goal of Beck's

SAUNEMIN – A family owned and operated seed company believes in helping farmers succeed.

Beck’s Hybrids stands behind on-farm research trials – something the company does in El Paso and several other sites throughout the Midwest, with the goal of making farmers better.

“You don’t have to be a customer to use this,” explained Sonny Beck, company CEO. “We put on the Internet a 300-400 page book every year that tests things which have good ROI.”

A trial with three solid years of a positive return on investment is considered “PFR proven” by Beck’s. The research involves fungicides, closing wheels and everything else a farmer may buy in addition to seed.

“We are totally unbiased on it,” added Beck.

Company leaders wondered how to succeed back in 1990 and found it was by helping farmers succeed. Beck’s has access to all of the major trait platforms on corn and soybeans along with the germ plasms. The variety of products offered has led to continued growth.

“Farmers really support us in how we are helping all farmers succeed,” added Beck.

Weeds such as water hemp continue to pose a challenge to growers as chemical resistance has developed. The current soybean trait platforms to deal with this currently include: Liberty, Enlist and Xtend. A new product for the coming year is known as Xtend Flex which has dicamba and Liberty resistance.

“They have added Liberty (herbicide) to the Xtend high-yielding program,” notes Beck.

Beck feels Liberty and Roundup mixed together is very synergistic and is one of the few methods to properly control water hemp late in the season.

“Of course, you can spray that fence row to fence row and not bother your neighbor or anything.”

Dicamba faces an uncertain future with the current registration expiring later in the year, although a new registration is expected this fall. The ninth circuit court sued the EPA, claiming dicamba was not properly tested. According to Beck, the court is also looking at current Enlist chemical technology to see if proper testing procedures were followed before it was allowed to enter the market.

“Most of agriculture says yes but that doesn’t mean the ninth district court won’t fight it and they’re going to rule on that,” Beck said.

In a year of much uncertainty out in the field, Beck believes using Roundup and Liberty on what the company calls the Freedom Plus beans, or LLGT27, is a good idea for proper weed control. This same mixture can work on the future Xtend Flex beans without actually applying dicamba to the crop.

Beck and others from Beck’s Hybrids spoke to a group of farmers Tuesday morning at the farm of Rich Fox near Saunemin with the idea of attendees arriving curious and leaving connected. Beck’s production manager, research manager, systems integration lead and sales consultant were on hand to answer questions.