From what I've heard, about 2/3 of people who put on fungicide get some yield benefit from it, but only 1/3 of the people get a financial return. that means that 1/3 say less or equal yeild, 1/3 say a better yield but it diidn't pay the cost of application, and 1/3 say a financial return. 2/3 of the people would have been financially better off to not use it.
Fungicide is getting popular around here and the pressure is on early in the season to plan to put some on prophylictically, that is, as a preventive, whether you need it or not. Those people are likely to be in the 2/3 that don't pay category.
Fungicide applications make money for the chemical companies and the applicators. That is fine. They don't usually make money for corn farmers.
I have a feeling that big farmers put this stuff on to better plan or predict their yields and they are changing from applying it to address diseases to applying it so they can count on a certain yield. Quite a different management approach. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it doesn't pay off on the bottom line the same way.
