STARK CITY, Mo. — In the soybean world, Kip Cullers is the equivalent of a rock star.
He’s the undisputed world champion of soybean production, and he’s spilling the beans, so to speak, on his record-shattering secrets.
“Anyways, uh, I always work under the theory that once they start blooming, you want to remove as much stress as possible,” Cullers told farmers from as far away as Brazil and Canada who were hanging on his every word like he was a preacher at a church revival meeting.
More than 2,000 farmers came to tour Cullers’ farm this week to learn from the master.
And he’s quite a farmer. Last year, Cul lers grew 155 bushels of soybeans per acre. That’s almost four times the national average.
Cullers has taken the soybean crown for two years in a row in a highly competitive market. But it isn’t just a contest. In a world where there are more mouths than ever to feed, boosting crop yields is big business.
Revealing his secrets, Cullers makes them seem almost deceptively simple:
• He waters his soybeans daily to cool and nourish the plants, a move that surprised some farmers who wait until leaves droop to turn on irrigation faucets.
• He uses the irrigation spray to apply fungicides late in the season so soybeans can fatten their pods instead of fighting infection.
• For fertilizer, Cullers uses chicken litter from industrial barns near his farm, applying about 3 tons an acre. It costs between $40 to $60 an acre, giving him an advantage over farmers who must use increasingly expensive synthetic fertilizers such as anhydrous ammonia, which cost $523 a ton in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
