High Speed Planting Corn Study

Key Points

ROI: Taking into account the potential increased yield from optimal planting dates, a high-speed planting system increases your likelihood of hitting your target planting window and seeing higher yields each year.
Planting Speed: Our data suggests that growers could plant twice as fast as traditional planting speeds with SpeedTube^® technology without sacrificing planter performance.
Full System: You can’t merely speed up planting and see these yield results; you need to invest in a complete high-speed system to effectively plant at higher speeds.

“You can, with a properly equipped planter, go faster without giving up yield.”

Jason Webster

Commercial Agronomist

Waiting for the ideal conditions to plant corn can be a high-stakes waiting game! We covered the optimal date for planting corn in another study. By and large, it’s important to make sure the soil conditions are ideal before you plant.

Chart showing yield optimization when corn planting occurs in the optimal planting window

When waiting for ideal soil conditions, we want to be able to get as many acres planted when the time is right. Traditional planting speeds are typically around 5 MPH. When considering how to plant faster, you can either purchase larger equipment, purchase more equipment (and manpower to operate it), or you can make your equipment faster.

We took to the PTI Farm to test how planting speeds would impact yield. The results? We found that there is very little drawback to faster planting speeds when you have the optimal equipment.

Planting windows can often be brief due to frequent rains throughout the spring. High-speed planting not only allows you to patiently wait for fields to get fit, but you can have confidence that you are able to complete planting quickly to hit your optimal planting window.