The eighth annual Middle Tennessee Grain Conference set for Thursday, January 31, at Coffee County’s Fairground in Manchester offers farmers insight to a number of emerging corn, soybean, and wheat production concerns. The conference is scheduled to get underway with registration beginning at 7:30 am. Registration is twenty dollars at the door or participants can pre-register for ten dollars by Monday, January 28 at the Cannon County Extension Office. Registration fees include the program and materials, refreshments, lunch, a copy of the conference proceedings, and a grain conference cap. This program, like all UT Extension programs, is open to all eligible persons regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, disability or veteran status.
A trade show of various seed, chemical and equipment dealers will begin at 8:00 am followed by a slate of speakers addressing current production topics for corn, wheat and soybeans beginning at 9:00 am. Roller’s Barbeque of McMinnville will cater lunch which will be sponsored by the Tennessee Farmers Cooperative.
Following lunch, Dr. Fred Below will provide the keynote presentation “Unlocking the Secrets to Higher Corn Yields”. Below, a professor of plant physiology in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois at Champaign, has categorized the results of his research into seven management practices or “wonders” that can result in high yielding corn. His study helps growers answer the question of what the latest products and practices contribute to corn yield. Below’s unique “omission plots” allow him and his research team to see the bushel impact when an individual “high tech” practice or input is added or subtracted, then compare it to other plots in which all “high tech” actions were in place in the same research plot. Replicated in various locations over various years, the test results have allowed Dr. Below to identify and rank those seven factors as having the greatest impact on corn yield.
Complete details on conference topics and pre-registration can be obtained from the University of Tennessee Cannon County Extension Office at 614 Lehman Street in Woodbury, Tn. For questions, please contact Bruce Steelman at 615-563-2554 or visit the Cannon County Extension website at https://utextension.tennessee.edu/cannon.
