It's challenging to think about soybean populations when it's below zero outside in mid-February. Heck, I don't even like to think about our seed sitting in storage in temperatures like this. But the other day, a seed dealer and I were talking about various soybean topics, and he reminded me that we may be in the field a couple months from now.

One of the topics we hit on was plant populations. There are a lot of different factors that influence soybean yields — some we can control and many we can't. Of those factors that we can manage, plant populations are pretty important in maximizing returns.