Today is the day that the National Corn Grower's Association announces their annual growers' awards. Thousands of applicants every year submit their verified yield results for a plot of corn no less than 10 acres in size.
There are different categories for representation including "no till", "non-irrigated", "irrigated", "strip-till" and a number of different cropping and watering processes. In addition, winning submissions are tracked on a state by state basis as well recognizing the different growing environments, weather and soil types and their effects on the yields of the plots entering the competition.
The last several years, some beneficial growing conditions and new technologies have been pushing the forefront of growing and in turn the world record yield per acre for grown corn has been broken in each of the last three years. Before this recent string of record breaking yields the world record for corn yield stood for 11 years at 442 bushels per acre on Francis Childs' farm in Iowa.
Twice the winner of the competition (in 2013 and 2015) was David Hula of Renwood farms, VA. In 2015 David Hula announced a verified yield through the NCGA of over 532 bushels per acre of yield.
To see how David Hula produced 532 bushels of corn per acre set the new corn yield record click on the link for an interesting video and interview where David tells some of the tips and tricks he's picked up over the years to consistently keep his name in the conversation for the top corn grower in the world.
David Hula's record comes on the back of Randy Dowdy of GA breaking the 500 bushels/acre yield mark for the first time ever in 2014. Both gentlemen are striving for even more yield next year. Will the weather cooperate and produce the ideal conditions necessary for growing more than twice as much as the national average yield for a US based farmer (which is around 180 bushels per acre), or will extreme weather conditions mean that David's record will stand for another year?
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2 comments:
If you review the "all contestants" pdf on ncga's corn yield contest we page you will see David Hula also had an entry at 276bu/ac. That's a spread of 256bu/ac. Until I hear an explanation for this anomaly I am skeptical
Judging from the size of the ears and the population he planted, it had to be somewhere up there. I'm guessing it's as simple as the fact that he loads up a few contest plots with inputs and 'experiments' and the rest of his acres he runs with a lot less attention (?) or maybe they really meant 356 bu/ac and it was a typo! :-)
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