Top yields usually make up coffee shop banter in farming communities during the fall, but often overlooked is how efficiently farmers achieve those top yields.

Bryant Knoerzer farms near Elwood, Neb., and strives for efficiency year in and year out. He has teamed with Matt Furlong of Bertrand, Neb., the past three years to put his practices up against other growers in the University of Nebraska Testing Ag Performance Solutions program.

TAPS allows farmers or teams of farmers to compete in field trials on small plots under the same conditions at the West Central Research, Extension and Education Center at North Platte. Knoerzer and Furlong competed in the subsurface drip irrigation corn division.

Knoerzer is also a Seitec Seed dealer. Furlong is a Seitec agronomist, so seed brand choice was a no-brainer. They went with Seitec 6433 VT2Pro. In addition to subsurface drip on five fields, Knoerzer also has center pivot and gravity irrigation systems in his own “real-life” operation outside of the TAPS contest.

Try out technology

What Knoerzer likes about participating in TAPS is that “it's a way to look at some of the newer sensor technologies that are on the market, and you can look at them on this system. You can see how they correspond without having to put your dollars out in the field.”

TAPS facilitates a number of interactive, real-life farm management competitions as an innovative way of connecting producers to industry professionals and offering a way of testing out new, advancing technologies through farm management competitions. 

Last year’s competitions included sorghum, subsurface drip irrigated corn and sprinkler irrigated corn. The participants in each competition make their own input decisions for their plots on the same field as competitors. These decisions include crop insurance, hybrid and seeding rate, nitrogen timing and amount, irrigation timing and amount, and marketing of their crop.

While getting to see firsthand how sensor technology works, Knoerzer says his TAPS participation has made him even more conservative in nitrogen use than he had been. “I've probably done more on tweaking of the nitrogen than I've done with the sensors,” he says. “I was always fairly conservative anyway, but I think it's made me even more conservative” on nitrogen use.

That appears to have paid off in 2021 since the Knoerzer-Furlong team tied for top corn yield of 311 bushels per acre with a team from the Moorefield, Neb., area.

Efficiency is where it’s at

Big yields are nice, but efficiency can be the key. The Knoerzer-Furlong team took home the 2021 Highest Input Use Efficiency Award by — as the name of the award implies — being most efficient with their inputs. The team planted at a seeding rate of 32,500 seeds per acre and applied 135 pounds of nitrogen and 9.35 inches per acre of irrigation water to achieve their high yield.

“Hands down, it's the most efficient farm that makes us the happiest,” Knoerzer says. “I mean that gives you the highest profit margin, and ultimately, that's what pays the bills at the end of the day is your profit margin.”

Furlong agrees. “From an industry perspective, this industry is so focused on yield,” he says. “Profitability almost seems like it's not talked about very much. I agree with Bryant 100% on the efficiency. The top yield is icing on the cake. That's really nice, but the efficiency is where it's at.”

Even though he has 15 years of experience as an agronomist, Furlong says his experience with Knoerzer has changed his approach in making recommendations from the field.

“I kind of had a circuitous path to getting to where I am at. I would say in a lot of respects it started with Bryant,” he says. “His management style rubbed off on me. Bryant's always been about profitability first, and not wanting to take unnecessary measures or spend unwisely.”

Making it pay

Furlong takes that frame of mind when he scouts Knoerzer’s fields. “Pretend that I'm going to have to write the checks. How would I look at this?” he says. “Sometimes I pick up the phone and call him to say, ‘Hey, here's what we're looking at. What do you want to do?’”

Knoerzer says the agronomist-farmer relationship needs to be a two-way street. “You're paying for expertise in that field, but I think you have the right to question or to think about it. That seems like a great idea, but gosh, it's going to cost us X, and do you really think we’re going to get a return out of that?”

Admitting that both he and Furlong are too busy to regularly check on the TAPS trial plots, Knoerzer sees the benefit of the comfort level provided by the sensors. “This program gives you faith in using sensors to help make your decisions,” he says.

Furlong echoes that relying on the technology and information they received from afar was probably a good thing. “We never went to the plot, and it's probably a good thing because had we actually seen it, we probably would have made some decisions that weren't really based in science, but based on emotion,” he explains.

Efficiency comes down to management, and the duo feels tweaking some of their decisions over the years got them to what they achieved last year. “I think a lot of people go through this. Your initial reaction is to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it,” Furlong says. “And not only is that inefficient, you’re usually pretty disappointed in what the yield is. … You hit the law of diminishing returns real quick.”

Learn more about the TAPS program online at taps.unl.edu.