Born for Beans, Wisconsin’s Soybean Detective Hunts ROI

“I tell farmers strictly what our research data reveals, and sometimes the truth gets me in trouble with the industry, but it also fuels my fire,” says Shawn Conley.

Equal parts detective and doctor, Shawn Conley wades into a green soybean sea, at the blade’s edge of Midwest soybean research. Counting pods in a Wisconsin field, he estimates the fruits of long-term farm trials and projects—strong yields and robust ROI.

Under, above, and within the canopy, Conley, an Extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is immersed in highly consequential research affecting the U.S. soybean industry. “I go at fieldwork in a two-fold manner,” he explains. “I want to provide the immediate answers that farmers need right now, as in today, but I’m also looking at how my recommendations can fix problems that pop up in the long-term, whether prolonged drought, extreme weather, or an unseen wild card. It’s a now-and-later soybean approach.”

Fueling a Fire

The quick and dirty on Conley’s background easily is summed: He’s never been kicked by a soybean plant.

Raised on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin’s Green County, Conley spent his entire youth without setting foot in soybeans. He exited college 1996 with an agronomy degree, hoping to land a job inside the herbicide industry, but his graduation date slammed into the debut of Roundup Ready: “It wasn’t the best timing,” he laughs. “Everybody was getting fired because everybody was spraying glyphosate.”

Notching his belt as an intern for a major chemical company, Conley was tapped as a top candidate for potato agronomy. He gained a master’s in the spud field and walked into his doctoral committee meeting under the assumption his future was in taters. Best laid plans. An hour later, he exited the room to work on soybeans.

Wisconsin Soybeans — “It’s (soybeans) a crop with more moving parts than anyone except a farmer realizes, and there are so many nuances to work on that have yet to be explored.” (Photo by Chris Bennett)

In short time, Conley became wonderfully obsessed with the multiplicity of a unique crop. “There is nothing predictive about soybean,” he describes. “It’s a crop with more moving parts than anyone except a farmer realizes, and there are so many nuances to work on that have yet to be explored.”

Simply, Conley, 49, doesn’t pine for his dairy days. “A typical dairy week is about 100 hours, but I’m only spending 70 in soybeans. On top of that, I have the best job in the world, examining production practices provided by the agriculture industry, and finding out if those offer genuinely good solutions to farmers. I tell farmers strictly what our research data reveals, and sometimes the truth gets me in trouble with the industry, but it also fuels my fire.”

Drop a Pin

Conley’s participation in recent soybean projects covers a wide agronomic range: developing an updated national soybean maturity group map; defining nationwide optimal soybean planting dates and seeding rate recommendations; measuring the impact of extreme weather soybean yield and profitability; and

Benchmarking Soybean Production Systems in the Northcentral U.S—an effort, alongside Patricio Grassini from the University of Nebraska, centered on the collection of soybean data from 8,000-plus farmers across 600,000 acres, and funded by the North Central Soybean Research Program (NCSRP).

Conley used the trove of data to develop best management practices in the project’s second phase, dubbed Boots on the Ground. Allowing the raw data to dictate what management practices should be used on particular acres, Conley ground-truthed the numbers through extensive field trials.

“We laid out optimal planting dates, row spacing, population, seed treatment, and fungicide, and looked at what farmers would normally do on the same landscape. The results ranged from a 3- to 6-bushel yield increase by adding our recommend practices, and averaged a $50 per acre new profit increase. These were all replicated on-farm projects across the northcentral region.”

What is next up for Conley? A project encompassing 85% of Midwest soybean geography, utilizing intensive scouting and satellite imagery to build a layered platform accessible to farmers, also funded by NCSRP. “Our goal at the end of this project is that a producer can enter the app, drop a pin location, and make management choices,” Conley says. “The platform will then run a simulation providing each site-specific area with the recommendation for highest yield or highest net profit.”

Toughest Questions

Conley adheres to five yield factors, starting with genetics. “Guys sometimes are tempted to plant cheap seed, but we’ve got 100-bu. potential and I advise farmers to start by investing in top genetics. I believe variety selection mistakes are often the place where farmers lose money.”

Shawn Conley in soybeans — “I have the best job in the world, examining production practices provided by the agriculture industry, and finding out if those offer genuinely good solutions to farmers,” says Conley. (Photo courtesy of Shawn Conley)

Second, he sticks to basics: “I like agronomy 101. It’s boring, but early planting, effective row spacing, and the best seeding rate make a consistent difference. Keep it simple so you don’t void the genetic yield potential.”

In the third through fifth slots, Conley cites the importance of weed management, soil fertility, and disease management.

A mounting issue of concern for soybean producers, according to Conley, is the complication caused by herbicide resistance, particularly related to planting dates. “We know there is a significant yield increase with early plating. I tell guys to get in 7-10 days of soybean planting if the ground is fit, before even starting corn. However, the challenge is you start laying in a residual herbicide, but the herbicide starts to break about the time waterhemp begins to germinate. That’s a real challenge for BMPs to get your high yield potential when you’re dealing with waterhemp that can be resistant to multiple modes of action.”

Going forward with more research projects, expect to see Conley deep in the rows, searching for answers: “I always want to encourage farmers to ask the toughest questions to their industry partners or Extension partners. Farmers should demand that we stay on our toes, because those high-level questions are what drive me as a scientist and push me to find soybean answers in the job I love.”

To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com — 662-592-1106), see:

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