Janssen's early planted soybeans began to bloom by June 1. “That's key,” he says. “As the season progresses, the day length shortens and the light spectrum changes. Yield potential goes down as the quality of the light changes.

“With early planted beans,you're putting together a bigger factory. It allows you to maximize plant growth before soybeans reach the reproductive stage,” he says. “The early planted, high-yield beans had 8-9 nodes before they flowered. I picked up 4-5 nodes that late-planted beans would never get.”

Janssen used a 30-in. planter to seed his plots, but split the rows to end up with plants on 15-in. centers. “Narrow rows are critical for high yields,” he says. “Narrow rows add an estimated 5 bu./acre to the yield.” His planting rate was 170,000 seeds/acre.

A hidden advantage to planting soybeans early, according to Janssen, is you're likely to do a better job. “By the middle of May, when most farmers plant soybeans, they're worn out from corn planting. They drive 8 mph to get the beans in as fast as they can and just want to get done,” he says. “There's a mentality that soybeans are just a rotation crop and not worth the effort to do the best job possible.”

The rest of Janssen's production practices are pretty ordinary, albeit steps many farmers don't use. Fall-applied dry fertilizer assures nutrient levels don't impede yields. Weed control includes a pre-plant herbicide and two applications of Roundup. One aerial application of Lorsban and one of Quilt tank-mixed with Warrior provides in-season protection against disease and insects.

“We had a total of $213/acre in production costs,” says Janssen. “That includes a fee for combining and the premium for crop and hail insurance, but no land charge.”

The math makes you think twice about corn. With 90-bu. yields and $9 beans, you're going to gross more than $800/acre. That still might not justify some of today's ballooning land prices, but it's certainly on par with corn.

“We have to find a way to make soybeans compete with corn or the crop is going to disappear,” Janssen says. “So many farmers want to go to corn-on-corn because of the economics. That's true if you have 50-bu. beans. It's not as lucrative at 75-80 bu./acre.

“Soybeans are a crop that nobody is focused on. Corn is king,” he says. “But there are gobs of opportunity. And in the long term, it's better for both crops to be grown in rotation.”

Adds Coey, “People get excited about corn, but they're starting to understand that a 10-bu. increase in soybean yield is just as valuable as a 30-bu. increase in corn yields. However, they're going to have to adapt new cultural practices and nurture those higher yields.”

So, the biggest impediment to growing high-yield soybeans may be under your baseball cap. “It's hard to think to change,” Janssen says. “We've adapted a different thought process and the result is 90-bu. beans.”

If Corn Is Biofuels King, Tropical Maize May Be Emperor

In terms of biofuel production, tropical maize could be the sugarcane of the Midwest. Its tall stalks are so full of sugar that it is at least one step closer to being turned into fuel than are ears of corn, according to University of Illinois research.

Maize may prove to be the ultimate U.S. biofuels crop. It produces 25% or more sugar as sucrose, fructose and glucose. This sugar is one step closer to becoming ethanol than the starch in corn, miscanthus, stover and switchgrass. These conventional feedstocks must be treated with enzymes to convert them into sugars that can be then fermented into ethanol.

Storing simple sugars also is more cost-effective for the plant, because it takes a lot of energy to make the complex starches, proteins and oils in corn grain. This energy savings per plant could result in more total energy per acre with topical maize, since it produces no grain.

When University of Illinois crop scientist Fred Below began growing tropical maize, the form of corn grown in the tropics, he was looking for novel genes for nitrogen utilization. Early research results show that tropical maize, when grown in the Midwest, requires few crop inputs, such as nitrogen fertilizer, chiefly because it does not produce any ears. It can be easily integrated into farmers' current operations than some other dedicated energy crops because it can be easily rotated with corn or soybeans, and can be planted, cultivated and harvested with existing equipment.

“Corn is a short-day plant, so when we grow tropical maize in the Midwest, the long summer days delay flowering, which causes the plant to grow very tall and produce few or no ears,” says Below. Without ears, these plants concentrate sugars in their stalks. According to Below, Midwestern-grown tropical maize easily grows 14-15 ft. tall building up to a level of at least 25% sugar in its stalks.

The tropical maize at the University of Illinois requires much less nitrogen fertilizer than conventional corn, and the stalks actually accumulate more sugar when less nitrogen is available.

Below explained that sugarcane used in Brazil to make ethanol is desirable for the same reason: It produces lots of sugar without a high requirement for nitrogen fertilizer, and this sugar can be fermented to alcohol without the middle steps required by high-starch and cellulosic crops. But sugarcane can't be grown in the Midwest.

The tall stalks of tropical maize are so full of sugar that producers growing it for biofuel production will be able to supply a raw material at least one step closer to being turned into fuel than are ears of corn. “And growing tropical maize doesn't break farmers' rotation,”Below says.