Case Studies

Hawclif Farms Case Study

At a recent Advanced Ag Solutions Summer Farm Tour, AAS client Nathan Lykins of Hawclif Farms shared with us his corn crop experience this year. “We applied at least 30 pounds more nitrogen than we ever had in the past with Daryl’s VR nitrogen recommendations,” Nathan said, “but you know, our corn right now is still looking green while our neighbor’s is starting to get that funny lime green tint to it.” Daryl quickly retorted, “that’s great, now we’ll look for it to show up in the grain bin, too!”

Hawclif Farms has been an AAS weekly scouting client for several years. Over those last few years they’ve increased their management of soil fertility with modified grids using soil types with GPS soil sampling. A concern of Paul’s for many years, (Nathan’s father-in-law) was the lack of credit they were making to nitrogen in the DAP (18-46-0) spring applied fertilizer. Spring plowdown with variable rate is helping balance P &K but their past practices attributed no credit to the VR spring applied N.



This season, they had a new monitor on the farm and controller on the sidedress bar. With Advanced Ag Solutions help they created VR – N prescriptions that allowed them to apply a “flat rate” of N using the as-applied recommendations from the spring dry fertilizer. Their goal was to apply a flat rate of 170 pounds of actual N total… through two variable rate passes. The first pass with dry fertilizer and the second pass sidedressing, wherein the sidedress trip credited the spring dry application. This very well could have saved them money had they not increased their overall N applied goal based on AAS on-farm research in similar soils. Instead, they believe they’ve done a better job of guessing closer to right! Either way you slice it, their corn looks good during grain fill and they’re excited for harvest! This demonstrates another low risk solution using technologies and strategies already on the farm in a systems approach through independent crop consulting.

Hawclif Farms Case Study Harvest Update
Yields came back strong for Nathan and Paul this fall despite a very wet June followed by record low rainfall in Aug, Sept and Oct. “Our corn was more even than I remember for this type of year,” said Nathan. “The corn didn’t burn up until you got right to the peak of the hill top and in years past it would have started falling apart further down the hill,” he said. Nathan attributes this yield stability to the better N management and variable rate seeding. Nathan also makes a point to note how stable the seed rate was using the prescription. “When we were not using the prescriptions the rates seemed to jump around some. On the prescriptions it just didn’t.”