National Wheat Contest Gleanings

The wheat may be in the bin for 2024, but there's still time to learn from the season. A review of the National Wheat Yield Contest is a good place to glean tips from farmers pushing for top-end yield.

The National Wheat Yield Contest recognized 26 national and 94 state winners for 2024. This year's contest had 516 entries, a record for the 9-year-old contest, which is organized by the National Wheat Foundation. As the official media outlet of the contest, DTN/Progressive Farmer profiled top-yielding farmers in the contest's main categories, and there are bushels of information within each article.

Phillip Gross of Warden, Washington, bested all contestants in 2024 and earned Bin Buster honors with his irrigated hard red winter wheat entry that yielded 223.08 bushels per acre (bpa). It's the second-highest yield recorded in the contest's nine-year history and Gross' fifth time atop the category. The overall contest record was set in 2022 by Rylee Reynolds of Castleford, Idaho, who produced 231.37 bpa of irrigated soft white winter wheat.

Of the 26 national winners in 2024, 7 are first-time national winners; 19 have placed nationally in the past. In total, 94 state-yield contest winners were named from 29 states. Their yield average across all categories was 133.09 bpa, up from 127 bpa in 2023. The 24 national winners in the contest's four traditional categories hail from 11 states. Their entries' yield average was 145.05 bpa, an increase from 144 bpa last year.

Two of the winners came in a new category, Digital Yield, which ran as a pilot in dryland spring wheat in four Northern Plains states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana). This category allowed growers to use technologies such as John Deere Operations Center, Climate FieldView or Bushel -- along with data from their calibrated grain cart scales -- to submit their yield into the contest from a 20-acre selected area from a previously entered field. By comparison, the four main contest categories require that contestants harvest and report at least 1.5 contiguous acres.

All national winners were required to provide a wheat sample to be tested for quality parameters, including milling and baking analysis. A panel of experts will evaluate the results of those samples, and top-quality winners will be announced in January and DTN will be reporting those results.

The 2025 contest boots up in March.

Find DTN's coverage of the 2024 National Wheat Yield Contest here: https://www.dtnpf.com/…

For individual profiles of the 2024 Bin Buster winners and tips about what they did, go to:

Irrigated Winter Wheat Winner:
https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Dryland Winter Wheat Winner:
https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Irrigated Spring Wheat Winner:
https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Dryland Spring Wheat Winner:
https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Above County Average Winners (dryland only):
https://www.dtnpf.com/…

For more information on the National Wheat Yield Contest rules and how to enter go to:
https://www.wheatcontest.org/…

For a listing of all national winners go to:
https://www.wheatcontest.org/…

For a listing of all the state entrants and winners go to: https://www.wheatcontest.org/…

Pamela Smith can be reached at pamela.smith@dtn.com

Follow her on social platform X @PamSmithDTN

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