Wheat School: Blowing past 100 bu/ac in Spring Wheat

Everyone loves a good challenge. The Grain Farmers of Ontario 2012 spring wheat challenge recently awarded top prize to Del Cressman, from Listowel, Ont., for his 112 bu/ac average crop. Breaking and surpassing 100 bushels per acre while maintaining protein doesn’t happen by chance, of course. In this video, Cressman outlines the management factors and choices they made that contributed to the award winning crop, but adds that the weather sure did help.

Cressman planted a new variety, Wilkin, with a heavy seeding rate, on a field with minimum tillage and high fertility. Cressman credits the yield and protein double whammy to the field’s past turkey manure applications, allowing for an excellent background of fertility to feed the crop.

He’ll be back in the challenge again this year, saying that spring wheat deserves a bit more attention than it’s received historically. “Between the high yield and straw, too, it was a very profitable crop,” he says. Participating in the challenge, also meant he scouted a bit more closely and harvested more carefully, which are never bad things.

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