December: the month when you decide about both your yield and your wallet
December on the farm doesn’t really feel like a break. The fields may be resting, but your head is working hard. Seed reps are calling, emails with discounts and “promo bundles” keep coming in, and on top of that, there’s pressure to secure your favourite hybrids while they’re still available.
Seed is one of the highest input costs per hectare. On larger acreages, we’re not talking about a few hundred, but thousands or tens of thousands of euros. And there’s one simple but crucial question hanging in the air:
How much seed do you actually need – and where is it really worth using it?
One seeding rate for the whole field is no longer enough
Anyone who has driven a tractor across a field from one end to the other knows that not every part is the same. There are stretches where the crop holds well year after year, even in dry or difficult seasons. And then there are patches where the stand is thinner, weaker, where plants struggle more.
A field is a mosaic:
- stronger zones – better soil, more moisture, higher yield potential,
- weaker zones – shallower soils, compaction, dry knolls, wet patches.
If you use the same seeding rate everywhere, you’re always losing somewhere. Each zone in the field needs something slightly different in some places it makes sense to push stronger areas to fully use their potential, while in others you need to support weaker spots so the stand can fill gaps and cope better with stress. A flat seeding rate ignores these differences sometimes it holds back your best zones, other times it leaves weaker zones without the support they would actually need.
So you’re wasting twice:
- first on seed, and then on lost yield potential.
Prescription maps: less guesswork, more concrete numbers
The goal of variable rate seeding is not to make life more complicated with technology. The goal is to take the same (or even lower) total amount of seed and place it where it has the best chance to pay you back.
Seeding prescription maps in CultiWise help you at two key points:
- They show you the different zones in the field where the stand has been consistently stronger and where weaker.
- They translate that into different seeding rates for those zones, in line with the potential of the soil.
The practical result for you is simple:
You immediately see how many kilograms of seed you need for a specific crop on a specific field, and also how many kilos and euros you save compared to a flat seeding rate.
Instead of a rough guess or “the way we always do it”, you have a solid basis for your December seed purchasing decisions with real numbers in front of you.
Today’s numbers, tomorrow’s crop
Saving on seed is one part of the story. Just as important is what happens in the field. A well-designed variable seeding plan will show up in the crop:
- the field is not overcrowded, but the canopy is well closed,
- plants make better use of water and nutrients,
- strong zones are “fed” enough plants to show what they can really do,
- weaker zones aren’t overloaded with plant counts that will never make top yields anyway.
Such a crop is more stable, less likely to lodge, and tends to ripen more evenly.
In short — saving on seed in December rewards you twice: you spend less upfront and you gain more at harvest.
Where to increase and where to cut back: crop-specific logic
This is where prescription maps stop being just a “nice picture” and turn into a real agronomy tool.
For maize, it often makes sense to push seeding rates higher in strong zones. These parts of the field have the soil and moisture to support more plants and can produce more and bigger ears. In weaker zones, it is usually smarter to reduce the rate you don’t waste seed on plants that will only produce small, poor ears anyway.
For sunflower and potatoes, the principle is very similar. In zones with good potential, it pays to add more seed or seed potatoes – plants there can build larger heads (sunflower) or more high quality tubers (potatoes). In problem areas, a higher planting rate just drives up costs without a proportional increase in yield.
For barley, wheat, soybean and other tillering or branching crops, the strategy is often slightly different. Weaker areas of the field need to be “filled in”, so a slightly higher seeding rate helps cover thinner spots, create a continuous stand and close the canopy faster – which also helps suppress weeds, for example in soybean. In strong zones, plants can tiller or branch more, so the seeding rate can be lower – the stand is more stable, less prone to lodging and makes better use of what the soil can offer.
CultiWise takes these principles and turns them into specific numbers in kg/ha for each zone. You end up with a precise plan – not only on paper, but ready to load into your seeder.
Why it’s worth thinking about this now
December is the perfect moment to decide whether you want to keep buying seed based on “gut feeling” and field averages, or based on what your fields actually need.
Register in CultiWise.
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Upload your field boundaries.
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Create your first prescription maps for variable seeding.
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Seeding prescription maps in CultiWise help you:
- know how much seed you really need
- and, before you sign the order, see clearly how much you will save.
That way, your December seed purchase stops being a necessary evil and becomes a thought-through step with a direct impact on both your costs and your harvest. And every kilogram of seed has its place and a clear reason why it’s being sown exactly there.