A Rise in Fungicide Demand

With high corn and soybean prices and favorable early growing conditions so far in 2021 is good news for growers here in the South, In addition, farmer interest in fungicides is strong. And the better corn and soybeans look, the more likely farmers will be interested in fungicides to protect plant health and support yield potential.

Aaron Burke, Central U.S. Crops sales director with Atticus, offers his thoughts on the bump in fungicide demand and the opportunities fungicides offer corn and soybean farmers this year.

“The general outlook for corn and soybean fungicide use is higher demand than an average year. We’ve had a relatively early spring, which helps growers get to the fields early sooner they get their crops in generally the higher the yield potential, especially in corn. And the strong commodity prices has driven high demand as far back to last fall. So, between the yield opportunity that they have and the strong pricing in the market, it's an extremely strong year for fungicides in both corn and beans.”

When selecting a fungicide for their crops, Burke says growers should consider history of past challenges on the farm, yield potential and any historical management practices that have worked.

“When growers in corn look at V3 to V5 applications, generally that's more based around historical issues they might have had with anthracnose, northern corn leaf blight, or some of the other diseases that are just traditional issues in corn, and the V3 to V5 application addresses those issues. Then when you get into the VT, or the tassel applications, those happen much later in the season, and really that's about another layer of protection for disease, and at the same time they're leveraging some of the plant health benefits that the fungicides have. So, those are the drivers that all corn and bean growers can be looking at.”