For Brooks Reid, every growing season is exciting as he looks for new ways to improve how he grows on the farm. This year he is testing BioPath® in a sidedress application. Join him and his assistant, Steven, as they discuss what they hope to see from their trial this year.

Farmers are always watching the weather, but this time of year, Brooks Reid’s eyes are always on the skies — and the ever-changing forecasts.

“We’ve had a lot of warm weather this spring, but we still have some overnight freezing temperatures right now. Cold and wet isn’t a great combination, so we held off on planting earlier this month. And I was surprised that others in the area were doing the same.”

Since Brooks lives close to where the solar eclipse traveled, he’s watching to see if that will impact the weather, because rainstorms seemed to follow the path of the 2017 eclipse.

“Weather is always a concern. We get one shot to get the season kicked off and emergence is really important. If you don’t have good emergence, then you’re gonna struggle.”

In the meantime, Brooks has completed some drainage work on his bottom ground and is in the process of spraying a burndown herbicide on his no-till ground. With that burndown pass, he included micronutrient fertilizer to prime the soil for the microbes so they can get to work.

Brooks Reid is always looking for ways to work with nature to improve his yields. Walking his fields regularly is key in doing that, so he’ll have his “boots on the ground” to learn how BioPath can help.

Keep up to date with Brooks as he navigates Midwest farming challenges and works to raise the best crops possible.

Brooks’ fields have some significant physical obstacles he has to navigate around. For example, he has hill ground with erosion challenges so he has several terraces. In the field where he planted his BioPath trial last year, he had to take long passes in the shape of a horseshoe because it had once been a part of two different farms.

“I chose that field for the trial because there’s a definite difference in the soil biology for each side of the field — one part of the field was only used for pasture, while the other had been continuous soybeans. I thought it would be an interesting comparison.”

While he didn’t see much of a yield bump last year, he did see a difference in the tissue samples between BioPath and the control on both sides of the field. This year, he wants to repeat the BioPath trial to make sure the positive result wasn’t just site-specific from where he pulled the samples. In addition to the in-furrow trial, he also plans to use it in sidedress to see if the warmer soil temperatures boost the biological response.