Case Study: Southwestern Illinois farmer achieves safer, more accurate spraying with DTN Spray Outlook

How planning and accuracy help reduce spray risks

Fred Helms of Southwestern Illinois is a full‑time corn and soybean grower who needed a better way to plan and ensure his spraying applications met label and weather constraints amid increasingly wet springs. To address this, he adopted DTN’s Spray Outlook in early 2018 and installed a DTN Ag Weather Station on his farm to get field‑level weather and agronomic data.

DTN’s Spray Outlook combines multiple weather variables with label thresholds into a simple red/yellow/green risk view (including inversion, precipitation, wind, dew point and temperature) fed by the on‑site DTN Ag Weather Station. Helms says DTN delivers superior 5–10 day timing for fronts and precipitation, helping him find more and better windows for spraying, stay on label, plan labor and equipment, and benchmark conditions against historical data.

Southwestern Illinois

Fred Helms

Southwestern Illinois