You would like meeting Jamie Gorder and her husband, Mark.

They farm near Wahpeton, N.D. Jamie won the North Dakota 2012 corn yield contest with a 298.6 bushels per acre corn yield entry. It was in the dryland corn division. The entry earned her second place in the national corn yield contest.

The couple enters the National Corn Growers Yield Contest every year. They use the yield contest to test new practices and products. The Gorders ridge till. The push plant populations and maturity on contest entries They were at 40,000+ ppa for this year’s contest and they planted a hybrid that was 100+ days in relative maturity.

An elevator employees flattens over the peak of a pile of corn being built at an elevator in South Dakota.

They prepare well for planting. They go through their planter and replace worn parts. They take the planting units to a test stand. Once they get into the field, they plant slowly and carefully. Zeo skips or doubles is their goal. They keep the planter at a uniform depth on the top of the ridges.

The Gorders spoon feed corn all year long. They use a full complement of macro and micronutrients. They split fertilizer applications. They knife in some fertilizer next to the ridges before planting. They put down a starter fertilizer with the planter. They sidedress when corn is about knee high.

The Gorders are pushing to hit 300 bushels per acre in the corn yield contest.

“It seems kind of hard to believe that we can produce 300 bushels per acre corn in North Dakota,” she says. “But it is definitely within reach.”

Maybe they will get there this year.