Agronomy

Welcoming the next intern class is always a highly anticipated part of our summer. This year, we are fortunate to have four bright, young agriculturalists joining our agronomy department to bring their fresh insights and put their classroom knowledge into practice by helping scout customers’ fields, collect data from our test plots, and develop an agronomy-related research project. At the end of the summer, each intern will wrap up their experience by presenting on their hard work.

The nitrogen cycle is a complex chain of microbial and chemical processes that play a major role in crop production. Nitrogen takes up about 78% of our atmosphere and is one of the 17 essential nutrients necessary for plants to complete their life cycle. It plays important roles in the plant such as assisting with protein and chlorophyll production (Sustainable Corn, 2015). The nitrogen cycle is a natural occurrence, but farmers can influence this process based on the 4Rs of nutrient management: right source, right time, right rate and right place (“The 4Rs”, n.d.).

Joining our team just in time for the spring growing season is Mike Conover, our new VP of Wholesale Fertilizer. Mike grew up on a farm in Holstein, Iowa, and has remained in the ag industry since, working for cooperatives in northwest Iowa for the past 27 years. The past 15 of those years were spent involved in agricultural procurement.

By: Adam Guy | Agronomy Sales

Several products exceeded our expectations during our extensive product testing and field evaluations. Network, AF-5Plus and Radiate stood out to us with their yield potential as well as their ease of application and handling.

Having spent his entire career in retail agronomy, our newest agronomy salesperson is no stranger to the agriculture industry. Bill Boies is joining the Fairfax team with 40 years of experience and a long history in the Keystone and Van Horne, Iowa, area. Bill grew up on a row crop and hog farm in Keystone.

Bill and his wife, Sandi, have three adult children: Sean, Steven and Kyra. In his free time, Bill enjoys going to Iowa football games, golfing, gardening and traveling.

By: Molly Haub | Premier Crop Systems, Iowa Nitrogen Initiative Collaborator

Every year, farmers have a delicate balance in trying to figure out how much nitrogen to apply to maximize their corn yield while also remaining economically viable. Making even small changes to a nitrogen program can seem scary at times. You may be asking yourself if there is an easier way to help you learn optimum rates on your fields and possibly even within the same field. I am happy to say there is an easy way to do this.

ProVantage Specialist

We added a new face to our agronomy team in September — Adam Millikin. As a ProVantage specialist, Adam will assist Tyson Miller with our precision agronomy program, ProVantage, including being heavily involved with data entry and compiling data for our end-of-season grower meetings.