Precision agriculture has many benefits, but the results are only as good as the data provided. Yield monitors and GPS receivers can reveal much about a field's performance at harvest time

U.S. farmers from Louisiana to North Dakota are preparing to switch more land to soybeans as they seek to limit losses from a slumping corn market

The end of harvest marks a good time to implement good management practices for yield monitors including taking steps to winterize components. Yield monitors continue to increase and in most cases are standard options on today's combines with the yield-mapping data being important information for precision agriculture services offered across the agriculture industry.

Experts with the Weed Science Society of America say one often-ignored strategy for controlling herbicide-resistant weeds is now getting a second look. Farmers are finding success by ensuring that weed seeds remaining in the field at harvest time aren’t dispersed and left to sprout in subsequent growing seasons.

The two primary requirements for soybean seed germination are temperatures above 50 F and seed moisture percentages greater than 50%. Air temperatures and seed moisture content during seed-filling are well above these minimums. But soybean seeds almost never germinate before maturity. Soybean, like many other grain crops, possess several mechanisms that prevent sprouting before maturity.

As fall harvest winds down in some areas, many strip-tillers will soon be back in the field building berms and fertilizing for next spring's crop.

As the 2014 corn crop heads down the “home stretch” toward physiological maturity and harvest, here are a few items you may want to add to your “honey do” list.

More than a year of bone-dry weather in the Corn Belt and Great Plains may dim our memories of the 2009 harvest, when fields in some states turned into swamps and harvest stretched into March 2010.