Raising 290- to 300-bushel-per-acre corn in a rainfed environment is no small feat, even in a single year. Marvin and Glenn Wiles, who farm near Plattsmouth, Neb., have reached this milestone several times throughout the past several years.

In 2014, they broke 350 bushels, taking first place in the no-till, nonirrigated category in the National Corn Growers Association's yield contest.

However, for the Wiles brothers, higher-yielding corn is a perpetual build.

"When you're producing 300-plus-bushel dryland corn, it's probably more luck than skill, but you've got to make sure everything else is right in hybrid selection, fertility, disease and insect management, and all those other things come into play," Marvin says.

For hybrid selection, the Wiles brothers rely strongly on John McNamara, who has been their agronomist since they owned and operated Wiles Brothers Fertilizer, now a subsidiary of Wilbur-Ellis. And McNamara notes their preference is to plant early. The Wileses plant hybrids of anywhere from 104 -to 120-day hybrids, changing maturities depending on planting date.

"Some of the soils we plant into are 35 to 40 degrees [F] when we start. It's usually around the first week of April," McNamara says. "We always try to select hybrids knowing the soil is colder and wetter in early April. We also take proactive measures to ensure a uniform and evenly spaced stand, using in-furrow fungicides, starter fertilizers and Acceleron seed treatments on corn. Those help ensure an adequately, evenly spaced stand even if it lays in the soil for three weeks."

In-season management

The Wileses also take a number of steps throughout the growing season to ensure stand consistency and minimize stress on the plant — including soil samples and tissue analyses to adjust nitrogen applications, along with fungicide applications. On high-yield plots, they also apply biological products such as fulvic acids and humic acids.

"There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle. It takes a lot of planning," Marvin says. "In high-yield plots, we usually apply fungicide twice — at the V5 to V6 stage and then at the VT stage. At V5, it usually goes on with an herbicide treatment. At VT, we'll probably use an airplane and put a controlled release nitrogen in with it and have it applied by air. Usually, with our planting dates, those applications are going on shortly after July 4."

This year, having what McNamara notes has been a petri dish of fungal diseases — from common rust to gray leaf spot to northern corn leaf blight to southern rust — in southeast Nebraska, the Wiles' fields have seen all of those infections occur. So, fungicide applications have been warranted.

"I can think of a multitude of things to help you grow a more productive corn, from fungicide, insecticide, they're all great things," McNamara says. "The question is, what is the return on your investment? Have you reached the threshold of a fungus infection or insect infestation that justifies the cost? With corn $3 versus $5, there are things that make more sense from an input standpoint than others.

"The only way I know how to outwit the grain market is to produce a lot of it. Those are things I can manage, and I'm probably going to have a few more input costs, but I'm going to have a lot to market. I'm going to make up for low grain prices with bushels if I get some July and August rainfall."

"It all comes into play — you have to pray Mother Nature is going to help you," Glenn says. "We take tissue samples throughout the year, having it analyzed to see where we're short. We always do soil sampling. When you grow a crop like that, it starts the year before. There's a lot of planning that goes on to reach the magical number of 300 bushels."

Early harvest advantages

By planting hybrids of different maturity, the Wileses are able to spread out their harvest workload, and they usually try to start harvesting shortly after Labor Day.

"Our high-yield plots are always out by the end of September," Marvin says. "Because of our high populations, we want to make sure we keep them standing — it won't stand forever at the 44,000 plants per acre population that we plant. We can't harvest it all in a week. It's a game of averages."

Glenn notes harvesting earlier also allows them to take advantage of different cash market opportunities earlier in the season, as well as earlier futures contract opportunities. Meanwhile, harvesting higher-moisture corn — usually no more than 25% — earlier in the season allows them to market to terminals that are willing to accept wetter grain.

"When corn is wet, it stands up pretty well, and you have less harvest loss," Glenn says. "Usually the grain you save will cover your drying costs. We have our own dryer, so it isn't an issue for us to dry it ourselves. If you look at the numbers, and pick all your corn at 18% and air dry it, it would probably pay off on the average, because you have less loss. Your losses are so much higher if you pick it all at 15%. We start early, and at that time, many elevators are used to handling wet corn."

The Wileses usually plan to finish harvesting by the end of October. To accomplish this, they focus on harvesting early-maturing hybrids first, and harvest the hybrids with strong stalks that have had a fungicide applied later.

"It's workload management," McNamara says. "There are two ways to look at this. Many growers avoid planting a less than 109-day hybrid because they think it's not going to yield as well. Hybrids today often come awful close to fuller maturity hybrids. I can harvest a lot of those acres, and take advantage of some early fall market opportunities. From a net dollars standpoint, it's not all that different than fuller maturing hybrids. We've got to have yield, no doubt about it. But it's about how much you bank per acre that matters. It's a balancing act of input costs versus revenue."