Roundup Ready Beans Are His Best Buy

Roundup Ready Beans Are His Best Buy CROPS New Techniques 22-1-17 Iowa farmer Steve Shelley started using Roundup Ready soybeans in 1996 when they came on the market. He now plants all his bean acres to them. "My reasons for trying Roundup Ready beans were many. In 1995 my chemical plan didn't work very well and in some places I couldn't even tell where I had applied herbicides. As a result, I had poor yields. We had a late, wet spring which made it difficult to apply preplant chemicals and they didn't work well. I didn't like using most of the bean chemicals available because I feared the carryover was hurting corn yields the following year. "In 1995 I looked at several test plots of Roundup Ready beans and all of them looked good with good plant height and strength and excellent podding, and best of all they were weed-free. I checked every plot I could find to learn how Roundup Ready beans yielded, and found that in every case yields were equal to or better than the yields on conventional beans - from 2 to 5 bu. more per acre. "In late April of 1996 I ordered enough Roundup Ready beans to plant all my bean acres. The beans cost $21.50 per acre and the Roundup $9 per acre. That added up to a total cost of $30.50 per acre for Roundup Ready beans. If I had planted conventional beans I figure I'd have spent $9 per acre on bin-run beans and $25 per acre on herbicides, for a total of $34 per acre. "My tillage program is to disk corn stalks in early April, then field cultivate just before drilling the beans in. I planted half my Roundup Ready beans on May 15th and 16, but because of rain I had to wait until June 10 to plant the rest. I sprayed Roundup once 30 to 35 days after planting. The fields were infested with foxtail, woolly cupgrass, and broadleaf weeds from fence to fence. They were so thick that I even wondered if I had any beans, to say nothing of what the neighbors thought. However, one week after spraying, only the soybeans were left and they stayed clean through harvest. Wooly cupgrass, our worst weed, was con-trolled 100 percent. The beans weren't stunted or burned at all. "With no weeds, harvest went very smooth. The beans averaged 48 bu. per acre, and even on my poorer soils they averaged 30 to 32 bu. per acre which didn't disappoint me at all. After two years I've had no problems with spray drift. Field edges are clean, with no weeds to combine or reseed and no chemicals in the ground. "If hail ever hits after I spray the beans with Roundup, I can replant to any crop. And I've eliminated the use of harsher chemicals which might contaminate ground water. I've noticed that corn planted the following year where Roundup Ready beans were grown tassels about 6 to 8 days ahead of neighboring corn fields planted the same day. I believe the ground-applied soy-bean chemicals are retarding the growth of the following crop. "Roundup Ready beans can be raised anywhere that soybeans can be grown - worldwide. They don't require any changes in equipment. Whether you plant conventional till or no till, there's just one chemical to buy and nothing to mix. Because of lower input costs, less wear and tear on equipment, and higher yields, our soybean acre profits increased by 15 percent. I planted all my soybean crop to Roundup Ready beans last year, too, and my beans averaged 44 bu. per acre, despite the fact that we received less than 1 in. of rain from June 23 to Aug. 18. I plan to continue this program in the future." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Steve Shelley, 1507 Stuart Rd., Stuart, Iowa 50250 (ph 515 523-2017).

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