Corteva Agriscience technical field agronomist Jeff Bode wants growers to treat the combine cab as a scouting platform. Harvest, he told Brownfield, is the best window to look back at the season's weed control program and start planning for next season — in this case, the 2027 crop year.

The logic is practical. At harvest, every escaped weed is visible from the windshield, and those escapes carry information. A field that stayed clean through canopy tells the grower one thing about program performance; a field with waterhemp or marestail poking above the corn canopy tells another. Bode's message to growers is that the observations made now, while the crop is coming off, are the raw material for next year's herbicide decisions.

He points to several steps growers can take during harvest to get the most from the crop already in the field and to begin preparing for 2027. The specifics he outlines center on using harvest-time travel to evaluate what worked and what failed in the current weed control program, then converting those notes into a plan rather than relying on memory next winter.

For growers, the economics are straightforward. Weed escapes that go unmanaged at harvest produce seed, and seed in the bank raises the cost of control in following seasons — through additional passes, more expensive chemistry, or yield losses from early-season competition. An audit conducted from the combine seat costs nothing beyond attention, while a missed patch of resistant weeds can add input costs across multiple rotations.

The recommendation also fits the calendar. Decisions about residual herbicides, trait packages, and seed selection for 2027 get locked in over the winter and early spring months. Growers who capture field-by-field observations during harvest — which fields held, which broke, where escapes clustered — enter those planning conversations with data instead of impressions.

Bode's role as a technical field agronomist for Corteva places the advice within the input maker's broader agronomy outreach, though the guidance itself is field-level: look now, record what the season actually delivered, and plan from evidence.

As harvest progresses across the Corn Belt, growers have a closing window to survey weed pressure field by field before stalks and residue bury the evidence. Bode's message is that the 2027 weed control program starts taking shape now, one pass through the field at a time.