Sep 1982 - Current

I was raised on a farm in eastern Nebraska, obtained a B.S. degree at the Univ. of Nebraska and graduate degrees at the Univ. of Minnesota. I joined the Agronomy faculty at Purdue in 1982 with statewide responsibilities for applied field research, graduate student training, and Extension programming with an emphasis on corn management practices. After 40 years of having the privilege to serve Indiana agriculture as Purdue's "Corn Guy", I retired from Purdue on 31 December 2022.

My Extension programming focused on optimizing yield, profitability, and stewardship of corn production for growers in Indiana and throughout the eastern Corn Belt. Over those 40 years, I shared my experience and knowledge of corn with more than 720,000 farmers and their advisors at over 2,000 Extension programs in Indiana and elsewhere in the U.S. I also had the opportunity to travel internationally, with invited participation in farmer conferences in Canada, Hungary, Argentina, New Zealand, Russia, Italy, South Africa and Mexico. The last 15+ years of my field scale research focused on identifying the optimal management of nitrogen fertilizer, seeding rates, starter fertilizer, sulfur fertilizer, biological in-furrow amendments, and the use of small UAVs for crop scouting and field research.

Since the mid-1990's, I made extensive use of the Web as an Extension communication medium. My primary online presence was the KingCorn Web site that included the popular Chat 'n Chew Cafe page that provided a "1-stop shop" for links to timely agronomic newsletters from landgrant universities throughout the Midwest, plus links to educational events and useful crop management references. In its heday, the "KingCorn" Web site was attracting between 300,000 and 400,000 views each year. Those Web sites have since been decommissioned in deference to "The Kernel" developed by my successor, Dr. Dan Quinn in 2021. For the immediate future, you can still access many of my Corny News articles at my "Corny News Compendium" Web page or indirectly from Dan's Web site.