The king and queen of South Dakota soybean growers hail from Charles Mix County.

The South Dakota Soybean Association recognized its yield and quality contest winners during the association’s recent AgOutlook Conference in Sioux Falls, and Kory and Tonya Standy took home top honors, with yields of 118.48 bushels per acre and 108.82, respectively, on irrigated ground.

“I was amazed with the yield — best yield I ever had,” Kory says. In a drought year, the Platte-area farmer was able to make good use of his subsurface irrigation. “We never had big winds, and my beans didn’t lodge this year, and everything turned out really well,” he says.

Kory’s winning soybean was Pioneer P28A42X, while Tonya took runner-up honors with Asgrow AG26XF1. The Standys helped the soybeans along with a foliar fungicide applied at the R2 to R3 stage, as well as micronutrients and potash injected through subsurface irrigation. Both were entered in the Group 2 or 3 Irrigated category.

The Standys incorporate a corn-soybean rotation “because it seems like you can pick up 10-, 15-, 20-bushel yield by doing the rotation,” Kory says.

Winter wheat is rotated into the farm’s dryland ground. Kory admits his dryland soybean yields dropped off 50 to 60 bushels an acre.

Contest rules state the contest field must be at least 10 continuous acres and a minimum of 3 acres must be harvested from this area. A third-party witness, such as an FFA adviser, university personnel, crop insurance agent, lender or other impartial witness must be present to supervise measuring, harvesting and weighing of the yield for each entry.

Friendly competition

Kory sees entering yield contests as a way to continue improving practices that can benefit the overall farm. “It’s a good way to see how good we are and see if we can keep improving on it,” he says. He also cherishes the friendly competition that develops between growers, as well as sharing practices and ideas.

Kory has entered the state soybean yield contest over the past few years, racking up multiple wins, but this year’s 118 is his best yet.

He echoes the “best crop ever” on his irrigated cornfield, with a yield of 312.32 bushels per acre — good enough for second place in South Dakota in the Conventional Irrigated category in the National Corn Growers Association yield contest. “I’d kind of like to hit 120 on the beans, and hopefully, I’ll get that done here.”

The Standys’ son Chandler, 25, won the yield main class two years ago but has yet to eclipse the 100-bushel mark. “He wants to get to that mark, but to do it on his own,” Kory says, “and we hope we can get him to that.”

Chandler will be working some of his parents’ dryland and irrigated ground this year to work toward that 100-bushel plateau.

Soybean results

Here are the soybean yield winners from South Dakota, given in bushels per acre:

Group 0, No-till

Group 0 or 1, Irrigated

Group 1, Nonirrigated

Group 1, No-till

Group 2, Nonirrigated

Group 2, No-till

Group 2 or 3, Irrigated

Group 3, Nonirrigated

Group 3, No-till

Master’s Class

Youth yield contest

Below are youth soybean yield winners:

Group 0 or 1, Nonirrigated

Group 2 or 3, Nonirrigated

Soybean quality contest

Below are winners for soybean quality:

Group 0

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Youth soybean quality contest

Here are the winners in the youth quality contest:

Group 1

Group 2

100-bushel club

The 2020 100-bushel club winners are: