PTI Farm’s 2024 High Speed Planting Corn Study is out, and the results show that a high-speed planting system increases a farmer’s likelihood of hitting their target planting window and seeing higher yields each year.

PTI Farm Commercial Agronomist Jason Webster says 7 years of data show that not only were yields maintained at higher speeds, there’s actually an increase.

“Traditionally, there's some growers that really felt that the only way they could do a good job of planting is if they planted slower. And yes, that was the case years ago, decades ago, but now we've got technology, high-speed planting technology, where we can plant faster without sacrificing performance. To prove this, we've looked at yield data. We put trials in. We put protocols in at the PTI farm. From 2018 to 2024, we planted at 4, 6, 8, and 10 mile an hour planting corn, and there's just been very little yield difference from those planting speeds. Matter of fact, there's only been a 2.1 bushel difference from the slowest speed to the highest speed. What does this mean? Well, it means with SpeedTube high-speed planting technology, you can plant faster and you don't have to worry about yield falling off. It's been very, very consistent.”  

Of course, Webster notes, these results are based on using high-speed planting technology. The results aren’t the same with non high-speed tech.

“We've tried to do high-speed planting with Seed Tube and it kind of simulates you as a grower. You got Seed Tubes on your planter and you're trying to get done planting the field, and all of a sudden the black clouds come rolling in and it's going to rain, and you say, "Well, let's hurry up and get this field done. Let's throttle up. Let's plant faster to get this field done." Well, we've done that with Seed Tube and we've run into some real problems. Matter of fact, this past year in 2024 where we did that, we took five mile an hour planting speeds, ramped it up to 10 mile an hour with traditional Seed Tubes. We lost 11.5 half bushel of corn times the price of corn. That was nearly a $50 loss on a per acre basis. However, we used that same five mile an hour, ramped it up to 10 mile an hour using SpeedTube, there was only a difference of 0.7 bushel to the acre and a $3 difference on a per acre basis. So it shows the differences of planting fast with and without high-speed planting technology.”

Watch the full version of this episode of On The Record