Purdue On The Farm is adjusting how data is presented to farmers 

By Scott Gabbard 

The snow may come and go, but the march to spring is inevitable. Robins were witnessed with almost a foot of snow on the ground. One cannot always see them due to their high flight patterns, but you may already hear the Sandhill Cranes, and they reverse course for their spring trek. 

Look closely, and you might glimpse the buds on the trees holding this year’s leaves. 

Farm fields are a little different, but the promise is still there. After the snow melts, cover crops and spooling winter wheat add some green to our otherwise brown landscape. While most change is incremental, it is still inevitable. 

One change that we are making is how some of our data is being presented. For instance, in the past, we might have stated that we detected Gray Leaf Spot (Cercospora zeae-maydis) in 43 percent of the fields (12 out 28) we scouted while conducting Purdue On The Farm field surveys in 2025. The keyword in that statement was detected. That is not good enough. 

Why? That’s the rest of the story. Of those 12 fields, eight of them were at a severity level less than or equal to 5 percent. Why is this important? At or below this level, research has shown that the yield loss is 0-2 percent. 

Using easy math, 2 percent of 200 bushels is four bushels. Local cash corn bid at time of writing was $4.5. This turns out to be $18. 

As written by Dr. Darcy Telenko almost seven years ago, “…fungicide applications add an additional cost to corn production. Therefore, economic factors and other disease issues need to be considered before deciding to apply a fungicide to manage gray leaf spot.” 

Since it could have been misconstrued that there was more disease in the fields walked than reality indicated. Additional information was required, an incremental but necessary change. 

So, what does 5 percent even look like? 

You can test yourself, copy and paste severity.cropprotectionnetwork.org into your web browser, and you can quiz yourself. If you would like to verify what your disease is yourself, check-off dollars will cover the cost of the analysis. Information on how to do this can be found at indianafieldcroppathology.com. 

This serves as a gentle reminder to not only read the fine print but also what is in simple black and white. A phone conversation from a friend long ago went something like this: “Don’t call me when you see something in the field, call me when I need to do something about it.” 

That unhappy phone call was made more than once. You learn to call with good news or no news to mix things up. Lesson learned. It was taken to heart, so this and other changes will occur moving forward. 

After all, “The Rest of the Story,” is often the best part of the story. After all, change is often incremental, inevitable, and a story all its own.