Even though Purdue Extension’s “Corn King” Bob Nielson will hand his scepter down as he phases out of his Extension Corn Specialist position into 2022, many would agree that his contributions to Indiana’s corn industry could be described as permanent.
“I hope that over the course of these many years I have helped corn farmers improve, not only their yields, but also their profitability – It’s always been my primary goal to provide education and information to growers that will simply help them do a better job at farming,” Nielson said.
After earning his bachelor’s degree at the University of Nebraska and his graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota, Nielson started at Purdue in 1982. His statewide responsibilities included applied field research, graduate student training and Extension programming with an emphasis on corn management practices.
Those duties remained largely unchanged during his 39 years on the job, but the methods by which he disseminated corn and agronomic information to producers and others in the industry certainly did. In the mid-1990s, Nielson had the foresight to use the Internet to connect corn farmers to university professionals, corn research, educational materials and each other by putting all these resources in one place – his KingCorn website.
“As we all know today, the beauty of the web is that it allows you to aggregate information from not just Purdue, but all over the Midwest, so the appeal of that website is that it provided people access to corn information from all over,” he said.
Nielson made extensive use of the web as a communication medium. The popular KingCorn website was quite a unique endeavor at the time. The Chat ‘n Chew Café – a page on KingCorn that became extremely popular to growers and agronomy professionals – provided links to timely agronomic newsletters from land-grant universities throughout the Midwest, and links to educational events and useful crop management references.
“Using that, what we were able to do educationally was phenomenal,” Nielson said. “I have always felt very fortunate to essentially get in on the ground floor and develop this website for corn, and it’s remained popular until I took it down.”
In the mid-1980s, Nielson was one of the founders of Purdue’s Crop Diagnostic Training and Research Center, where researchers would provoke problem weeds, conditions or insects in dedicated acres for the purpose of teaching growers, Extension educators and others how to identify and treat various crop conditions. At the time, such a hands-on, interactive classroom devoted to agronomy was truly one of a kind. As a collaborative project, the lab also incorporates individuals from entomology, weed science and plant pathology, and remains extremely successful today.
“There were labs that emulated us in the following years, but I believe we were the first to develop that kind of a hands-on classroom setting. I’ve always really been proud of being part of the founding fathers, as it were, of that operation,” he added.
Nielson will retire completely at the end of 2022. In the years to come he is looking forward to spending time with friends and family, picking back up his genealogy hobby and eventually traveling the country and globe with his wife, Suzanne. Though he is looking forward to all this, there are things he knows he will miss about being Purdue’s top-most authority on corn. Namely, Nielson will miss visiting with farmers and others in the ag industry, graduate students and county Extension staff in Indiana and various other states.
“Honestly, the thing I think I’ll miss most will be the opportunity to interact with the people around the state of Indiana,” he said. “It’s just been a great opportunity to interact with some wonderful people. I feel that I’ve been fortunate to serve the people, doing what I’ve done with corn production and education. It’s all made my job very enjoyable and rewarding, and I just hope in return that I’ve done some good for the corn industry in the state. It’s been a fun ride.”
