Recipe for High Yields: NCGA Yield Contest Winner Says the Ingredient List is Long

Every year farmers rise up to the challenge of pushing the yield envelope on their farm.  The agronomic approach they take to get high yields is different for every farmer.  However, there are some common yield robbers they all share and some ways to overcome them and push yields to new heights. 

National Corn Growers Association Yield Contest winner Kelly Garrett is disappointed if average corn yields on his farm don’t hit 400 bushels irrigated and 235 dryland.  And the recipe for his high yields is a long one.   "It's very much attention to detail.  There isn’t one silver bullet at all.  There’s 10 or 12 or 15 things that you need to do correctly.  On corn it would be foliar applications, hybrid selection and PGRs, plant growth regulators, you know things like that. Variable rate applications of things."

In fact, the Denison, Iowa farmer says plant growth regulators are a huge part of his success for both corn and beans.  "So, the analogy is the plant grows more efficiently and does a better job of making yield verses just growing say as tall as it wants to grow." 

Garrett also recommends farmers have the water tested on their farm.  "Checking their water, the pH of your water is.  If your water is hard with iron and magnesium things like that that’s tying up your chemicals, your fungicide or your foliar applications of things."

Plus, he recommends biologicals to help corn more efficiently use the nutrients available to add yield.  Garrett says, "Another piece you know when I said 12 or 15 things you need to do biologicals are a big deal and it takes research to understand which one's work in your area, which ones don’t but it's something that everyone needs to pay attention to.'

Soybean farmers are also using biologicals and research is showing soil fertility is a big factor in boosting yields, including micronutrients like sulfur but also macro nutrients like nitrogen. 

Joe McClure is co-director with the Iowa Soybean Association's Research Center for Farming Innovation. He says, "Adding nitrogen to in your high soil high yield soybean areas where maybe you're using force more yield than the nodulation to keep up and provide the nitrogen could have an impact."

Weed control also tops the list of yield robbers, especially with the growing number of resistant weeds.  McClure says, "So, it's looking at that integrated approach and making sure we do pre and post and we're rotating our treatments are our control mechanisms and then adding new ones in like cover crops, like 15-inch rows to get to canopy quicker."

But likely the most silent and costly soybean yield robber is soybean cyst nematode or SCN. Greg Tylka, Iowa State University Professor also heads up the SCN Coalition.  He says, "And estimates are consistently around $1.5 billion. That's billion with a B annually. "

The first step is detection and determining the populations through a soil test and then farmers are using a three-pronged approach to combat SCN including rotation to a non-host crop.  Tylka says, "So corn is our best tool to lower number, resistant soybeans will keep numbers in check ideally and then the new tool in the toolbox, it's probably been 10, 12 years now is seed treatments."

And whether farmers use some or all of these tips in their agronomic plans for 2023 it will improve their recipe for higher yields.