Georgia soybean growers put $2.6 million more into their pockets
this year thanks to a new
management program.

“This is the simplest management program to help soybean farmers
become more profitable
that I’ve ever seen,” said John Woodruff, an agronomist with the
University of Georgia
Extension Service.

What did farmers have to do to get the extra money? Just go
through their fields one more
time, in mid-August, applying soluble boron mixed with a
pesticide called Dimilin.

That one-time application, Woodruff said, “can boost yields by
three to, in the best cases, 10
bushels per acre.”

With this year’s prices hovering near $7 per bushel, that’s a
gain of $21 per acre or more.

Georgia farmers planted 400,000 acres of soybeans this year.
They treated nearly one-third of
that with the chemical mixture.

Woodruff said the farmers testing the program have nothing but
praise. “It’s not complicated,
it’s not expensive and it’s not extremely time-critical,” he
said. “It is very profitable for the
effort.”

For several years, Gary Gascho, a researcher at the UGA Coastal
Plain Experiment Station,
worked to make soybean plants produce more and bigger pods.

The quarter-inch-round soybeans grow inside the pods. The more
pods on a plant, the more
beans it can produce.

Gascho found that boron, when applied just before the pods
lengthen, makes them grow
longer.

At the same time, other researchers and extension specialists
were working to protect soybeans
from hungry caterpillars.

“The caterpillars eat the leaves,” said Randy Hudson, an
Extension Service entomologist.
“Then the plant can’t make enough energy to produce the pods and
beans.”

One chemical, Dimilin, controls the caterpillars well, he
said.

Hudson, Woodruff and Gascho worked together to find a way to
make it easy for farmers to
combine these chemicals in one application.

“It costs about $5 per acre to apply the boron-Dimilin mixture,”
Hudson said.

On-farm testing began in 1994. These tests verified research
results.

Woodruff said farmers are more likely to believe test results if
they can hear about it from
other farmers. “It’s not that they don’t believe us,” he
said. “It’s just that then they know it
will work on their farm, too.”

Hudson said the program could increase soybean profits in
Georgia by $4 million to $5 million
a year. “It produced such good results this year,” he
said, “we’re hoping a lot more farmers
will enroll next year.”

What happens to all those soybeans? Woodruff said the average
person comes across them
eight or nine times every day.

Processors crush the beans for oil. Food processors use the
soybean oil in crackers, cookies,
salad oils and dressings, margarine, mayonnaise, soy milk and
milk products, and many other
processed foods. The oil is even used in cosmetics.

Livestock, including beef cattle, hogs and chickens, eat the
meal that remains after the
crushing and convert it to meat.

“Soybeans have more uses than many people even think about,”
Woodruff said.