Chesapeake, Va., farmer Heath Cutrell won the non-irrigated division of the 2018 National Corn Growers Association Corn Yield Contest with an impressive 360.8030 bushels per acre.
His winning entry was actually planted just south of the Virginia state line in North Carolina. Interestingly, Cutrell also placed second in the non-irrigated division of the national contest with a yield of 324.8530 bushels per acre on his Virginia farm.
As you can imagine, Cutrell is a big proponent of entering yield contests. He says the healthy competition is fun and helps make him a better corn producer by trying new things to earn top yields.
He notes his fellow farmer and good friend David Temple of Elizabeth City, N.C., encouraged him to enter his first NCGA yield contest six years ago, because he knew Cutrell was raising big-bushel corn on his farm.
“Nothing is better than good competition. It makes you do things you wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. It works well for me because I have the support of my landlords to enter the contest. I enjoy the people I have met through the contest and have made a lot of new friends outside of my community here in Chesapeake,” Cutrell says.
Interestingly, he does not have a specific contest plot. He uses a high yield strategy across all his acreage
“Everything we do for one acre, we do for 1,500 acres. We do it all exactly the same from start to finish. I don’t have a contest plot. It takes a lot of extra time to babysit 10 acres. I don’t have time to do that. It’s hard enough as is to get the crop in the ground. We find the best corn as we’re harvesting it. When I know it’s really good corn, I’ll stop and call the people who do the yield checks and they’ll come out and verify the yield for me,” he says.
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