Start your 2026 planting plan with Stine’s Yield Maximizer Program

A customized planting plan through Stine’s Yield Maximizer Program

Through Stine’s Yield Maximizer Program, growers receive personalized, season-long support paired with data-driven results and innovative solutions backed by decades of expertise.

There is a lot to plan before the planting season begins. Our goal is to work alongside our farmers every step of the way, providing peace of mind that their seed investment is supported by advanced agronomy and protection tools. Here’s how Stine partners with you to help meet and even exceed your yield goals in 2026.

Before and throughout planting

When we say Stine genetics are unmatched in the industry, we mean it. Through our Elite Yield Trials and Product Development Plot (PDP) program, Stine’s testing network generates tens of thousands of data points. That data helps ensure the products we recommend for your planting plan are the right fit for your field environment. 

“Our confidence with the amount of data points collected in the PDPs and the rigorous testing in our Elite Yield Trials ensures we can confidently place products in growers’ fields and train anybody that needs to know about our products,” says DuBay. “With all the notes we take from this data, we can be of service to farmers when they have problems and not only ensure they have the right products but also help them identify and dissect what’s really going on with their fields.”

As a technical agronomist, DuBay is heavily involved in summarizing PDP data and using it to select characteristics for each soybean variety and corn hybrid. That information helps determine how each product will stand up to seasonal pressures, along with the inherent traits it offers, such as disease tolerance.

In 2026 alone, more than 16,000 data points were taken from Stine soybean PDPs, and 78,000-plus data points were reviewed on the corn side.

“Our intent isn’t just selling seed,” says DuBay. “Our data guides our agronomic and sales team to provide tailored advice for our products and helps us decipher how those products will perform at their best in your field environments.”

After evaluating field environments and choosing hybrids and varieties tailored to each operation’s specific challenges, we use our data points to advise growers on planting plans — from planter singulation and population recommendations to seed treatment options.

On the corn side, Stine also tests hybrids using multiple planter types.

“If there’s a question about how a grower should plant a product, especially our MX Series Corn by Stine lines, we have worked with precision dealers and used different types of planters in our testing programs,” notes DuBay. “We can give the farmers specific settings at what their planter should be set for a certain hybrid. Essentially, we can prescribe planting recommendations per hybrid based on which kind of planter a farmer has.”

Post-planting

In the days and weeks following planting, Stine agronomists remain available as part of the Yield Maximizer Program to assist with stand counts.

“We do stand counts for day one, day two, day three,” says DuBay. “We give them stand, emergence and replant recommendations as well. In our testing program, we look at all these factors. We even have double-crop soybean plots so we know what soybeans respond to double-crop strategies.”

For emergence and stand counts, some of our agronomists will be working with John Deere-owned Sentera — a leading provider of remote imagery solutions for agriculture — to conduct aerial scouting on fields. 

“The agronomy team will have access to drones that will measure stand count and plant spacing and will be able to quantify to the grower how efficient their planter is at planting,” says DuBay. “Having access to tools like this gives us extra confidence in our products and placement and informs us when we need to make planter recommendations or provide replant suggestions. It helps us home in on planter efficiency, which is valuable information for the farmer.”

Midseason

Stine’s support doesn’t stop when the crop is out of the ground; our experts follow up with growers midseason to discuss progress, emerging issues and input timing.

“We follow up midseason to discuss fungicide timing and provide our recommendations for application at peak times, like pollination or just before,” says DuBay. “Essentially, we’re going to be there with them hand in hand the whole time so they can have confidence that if anything goes wrong, we’ll be there to help them along the way and give them any sort of service they need.”

Harvest

This partnership continues through the harvest season. As part of the Yield Maximizer Program, farmers will sit down with their Stine sales and agronomy team for a year-end review.

“We’ll go through yield results and what worked well throughout the year then use that information to devise a plan for the next planting season,” says DuBay. “If they want to step into something new, like conventional or MX Series Corn for 2027, we’ll be there with them to help them figure it out. We want to help them be proactive rather than reactive at the end of the day.”