To evaluate the agronomic and economic benefits of DeltaForce, Successful Farming magazine asked Matt Darr, associate professor, Iowa State University, and Nathan Paul, operations manager for Iowa Soybean Association On-Farm Network, to calculate return on investment as well as performance results through field trials.
For 2015, half of the Boenders’ planter was converted to hydraulic downforce. The other half used air bags. Load pins were added across the entire planter so weight was measured on every single row.
Eleven strip trials were placed in the Boenders’ fields to test hydraulic downforce vs. air bags. Strips were a minimum of 300 feet long. When scouting, Darr and Paul spatially picked GPS points within each of the treatments. Typical counting protocol was set up for scouting plants and done across six paired treatments. There were 12 points across the field where population data was collected.
For the original story by Successful Farming, click here.