The advice from champion corn growers David Hula and Randy Dowdy for the upcoming season isn’t flashy, but it is a blueprint for success in a challenging year. In a world often distracted by “quick fixes,” they insist that disciplined execution of the fundamentals—from the planning process to the final pass of the combine—is what can help you capture high yields and ROI this season.
Here are three specific actions they recommend:
1. Build Your Yield House
David Hula often compares high-yield corn production to building a home. You don’t start with the roof; you start with a solid foundation.
“When building a house, you have the design, the foundation, and the framing,” Hula says. “On the farm, those basics look like choosing the right hybrids for your farm, picking the appropriate tillage system, getting your fertility in order, and ensuring your planter is truly field-ready—not just ‘dealer-ready.’”
2. Focus On Timely Actions
A recurring theme for Hula and Dowdy is the distinction between speed and timeliness. In today’s world, equipment allows farmers to cover acres faster than ever, but speed doesn’t equal success if the timing is off or the practice is poorly done.
“You can’t pay for or buy timeliness,” Hula says. “The grower has to be willing and ready to go when he needs to go. You can’t buy back a lost window of opportunity.”
This means your logistics, maintenance, and finances must all be prearranged and in order before they’re needed. When the weather breaks, you should be moving — not deciding on a plan or fixing a planter. This readiness extends through the entire season, Hula adds, and not just at planting or sidedress time.
He shares a powerful example of the payoff when a grower is ready to act. A Midwest farmer called him late last summer and said he had southern rust in his corn crop and asked what he should do.
“I said, ‘go spray,’ and he claims that fungicide application saved him 62 bushels [an acre],” Hula recalls. “That’s the kind of result that could help a person service a lot of debt.”
3. Avoid the ‘Shiny Object’ Trap
With a constant stream of new products hitting the market, Randy Dowdy warns farmers not to let the “latest and greatest” distract them from covering the basics.
“Every day, somebody has a new biological or stimulant they’re trying to get you to buy,” he says. “If everything we were told was worth five to 10 bushels an acre, this job would be a lot easier than it is to make ROI.”
His key message: don’t let products or unknown practices distract you from implementing the fundamentals well. “Test things, yes—but on top of a solid foundation, not instead of it,” Dowdy says.
Dowdy and Hula share more recommendations on their podcast Breaking Barriers With R&D and earlier this week during their discussion on AgriTalk. Catch their conversation at the link below:
