High Speed Planting Corn Study

Waiting for the ideal conditions to plant corn can be a high-stakes waiting game! By and large, it’s important to make sure soil conditions are ideal before you plant. (Check out our Corn Planting Date study for the results we've seen.)

Planting windows can often be brief due to frequent rains throughout the spring. When waiting for ideal soil conditions, we want to be able to get as many acres planted when the time is right. Traditional planting speeds are typically around 5 MPH. When considering how to plant faster, you can either purchase larger equipment, purchase more equipment (and manpower to operate it), or you can make your equipment faster.

In this study, we're measuring how planting speed impacts yield. The results? We have found there is very little drawback to faster planting speeds when you have the optimal equipment.

In fact, by incorporating SpeedTube, our data shows that growers could plant twice as fast without sacrificing planter performance. Being able to plant almost twice as fast allows farmers to wait until planting conditions are perfect to plant, resulting in the best yields.

When we average data across all six years of this study, we see that not only do we not see a drop in yield at higher speeds, we actually see an increase. A planting speed of 8 MPH gave us the highest yield at an average increase of 2.5 Bu/A over 4 MPH. We've seen an average yield increase of 1.1 Bu/A at 6 MPH and an average yield increase of 2.2 Bu/A at 10 MPH.

High-speed planting with SpeedTube not only allows you to patiently wait for fields to get fit, but also gives you confidence that you are able to complete planting quickly to hit your optimal planting window.

In-Depth Study Videos

Study Details 

Study data collected 2018-2023 at the PTI Farm in Pontiac, IL.