Flexibility Is Important When You Work With Seeds

Monty Malone, US-Soybean Agronomy Lead, Crop Science, Bayer U.S.

It would be difficult to work as an agronomist and be rigid on your plans. If you were devastated every time something didn’t work out, that would defeat the purpose of research. Research is trial and error, and being flexible is important to that process.

Luckily, flexibility is something I get to practice every day at home. I have four daughters — plenty of drama — and flexibility is what I’d call a necessary survival skill. Still, receiving a Flexibility Award from Bayer caught me completely off-guard, and I’m incredibly honored to have been nominated.

In my opinion, most agronomists are wired for flexibility. We don’t really have a “typical work day,” and frankly, we would probably be bored if we knew what to expect. We’re a little bit analytical; we like the details and the detective work that go along with discovering the differences that affect each farmer’s field.

At Bayer, I work specifically with Credenz soybean seeds, which are built on “Smart Genetics.” We have more than 50 tailored varieties of our soybean seed, and each variety is designed to fit a grower’s specific field and conditions.

Agronomists are in the field collecting data as soon as the plants are out of the ground and at critical stages as much as possible until harvest. They walk plots to see how different varieties grow and respond to different environments — and take lots of notes!

The trick is deciding which variety will work best on which field. You see, selling seed is not black and white. There’s no formula that you can plug in and say, follow this prescription for these results. Seed is dynamic and doesn’t always conform to expectations.

As seed salesmen and agronomists, we have to adjust and interpret conditions, and anticipate needs that may not even be discussed at the time of sale. So my role and my team’s role is to do extensive testing to know which varieties are best suited for which markets and conditions, so that we can best help our sales reps to place them.

In 2016, we had very favorable conditions for soybean growth, so everyone was expecting high yields — and that came true. 2017 was a different year, and very mixed. Some areas had a drought like never before, and that required some unique variety selection and support for them. Then in other areas, conditions were perfect — one of the best years ever.

So in 2018, it’s going to be a little more difficult to take this data, which was so different from one region to the next, and make good solid recommendations. We’re going to have fewer varieties that are recommended across the board. Every recommendation is going to need to be very specific, very local — perhaps even changing from grower to grower or field to field within the same region. It will be a challenging year for growers, and for our agronomists and sales reps who advise them. And a great time to maximize our flexibility!