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The pilgrim planted maize from the Native Americans which was much like volunteer corn sprouting from the previous crop. This corn didn’t look much like our uniform plant culture of todays corn fields. All the genetic variation was expressed some good. Some not so good. But a natural selection process took place that we needed to see the big improvements that we have today.
“In 1972–1978, 100% of the fields in the trial were all conventional till,” he says. “In 1979, the first reported no-till field came in as a practice for our performance trials, and no-till started to expand over time. By 1996, we had the first report for stale seedbed, which is a reduced tillage practice aiming at better weed control. By 2008–2010, only about 15% of the fields in the trial were still conventional till with the rest being minimum or reduced till. From 2013–2020, strip-till was introduced. By 2021, none of our fields in the trials had conventional till, The pilgrim planted maize from the native Americans which was much like volunteer corn sprouting from the previous crop. This corn didn’t look much like our uniform plant culture of todays corn fields. All the genetic variation was expressed some good. Some not so good. But a natural selection process took place that we needed to see the big improvements that we have today.The adoption of crop rotations and reduced tillage accompanied yield improvements in the past 50 years. Photo courtesy of USDA.
We lost a Seedsmen and lost a friend
John Robert Bedtke,
passed away on December 22, 2025, at the age of 75.
For 46 years, John was the proud owner and sales manager of Bedtke Brothers Feed and Seed, working alongside his brothers, Jim and Robert. He often reflected on the business, as one of his greatest accomplishments. John was not just an entrepreneur;
He shared his knowledge with those he worked with and helped others to build a business while in the hard beginning years. For this I will always be forever grateful. He truly was a great Seedsmen one of the pioneers for LG when the French company Lima Grain purchased the marketing rights in North America in 2000, and join even traveled to Paris on a Seed Trip with LG.
