Wheat yield contest winners share their tips for success

Since reaching 80 million acres of wheat in 1980, U.S. farmers are growing less of the crop: just 50 million acres of all classes planted for the 2023–24 crop year. 

Still, wheat is important on farms in nearly every state. It is a key component of a well-balanced crop rotation, and adds diversified income to farmers who fine-tune crop management skills and push yields. 

Participants in the 2023 National Wheat Yield Contest used several strategies to push yields, many of which they share below.

Setting the stage

Profitable yields start with fresh new seed each year, says John Wesolowski. The farmer in Warren, Minnesota (northeast of Grand Forks, North Dakota) buys new spring wheat seed each year, adding a package of insecticide, fungicide, and biological seed treatment.

New seed has a pure genetic profile, whereas farmer-saved seed may have watered- down genetics, depending on how many years it has been saved. New seed can be expensive, but for Wesolowski, the convenience outweighs the cost. 

“I can go to my supplier and get professionally treated seed with all the goodies that I want. And it’s perfect,” he explains. 

Travis Freeburg, who grows hard red winter wheat in Pine Bluffs, in far-west Wyoming, agrees. Plus, buying new seed each year allows him to take advantage of new genetics. He has long used Clearfield varieties from Colorado State University in nearby Fort Collins. For 2024, he added a Coaxium variety. “With Coaxium, I can mix Aggressor herbicide with broadleaf herbicides for one-pass control,” he says, adding that Beyond herbicide has worked well with Clearfield varieties to control rye and cheat grass.

Lance Olson has a flax/spring wheat/canola crop rotation on his farm in the southwest North Dakota community of Mott. He uses a Shelbourne Reynolds stripper header on flax and wheat to ensure as much residue as possible protects the soil and preserves moisture. That’s a limiting factor on his operation. 

Olson says the farm gets about 10 inches of precipitation each year on average, and soils range from sand to loam. “We have about every type of soil you can imagine,” he says, “and choose our wheat varieties to match our soils.”

Seeding strategies

Wesolowski’s field of WestBred WB9590 topped the dryland spring wheat category of the 2023 National Wheat Yield Contest with a 126.09 bushel-per-acre (bpa) yield. In 2023, for the first time, he adopted variable-rate wheat seeding. He adjusted the seeding rate from 1.5 million seeds per acre — commonly recommended to spring wheat growers — to 1 million seeds per acre on higher-producing areas, and 1.375 million seeds on lower-producing regions. 

He’d planted 1.5 million seeds per acre as a longtime standard, but, he explains, “I just thought there was too much seed, and plants competed with each other.” Those thickly planted areas caused lodging and harvestability issues. 

Now, with the right amount of seed in the right place, he says, stands emerge thinner and shorter, are less prone to lodging, and easier to harvest.

Wesolowski says he didn’t notice any yield loss where the seeding rate was lower. Moreover, he says he saved about $8 per acre in seed costs.

On a different field, the Minnesota farmer further tested three different seeding rates, aiming for live seed populations of 850,000, 1.25 million, and 1.5 million. 

“And when I harvested those strips, I didn’t lose any yield from wheat that was seeded at 850,000 live seeds,” he says. 

Olson, who earned second place in the 2023 contest’s spring wheat division, with a dryland yield of 122.09 bpa, says a paying strategy is keeping seeding equipment up-to-date and in tip-top shape. 

“I don’t buy new stuff,” he says. “I just keep mine updated and well maintained.” 

He uses a John Deere air seeder, with 7.5-inch spacing, to drop 1.5 million seeds per acre. The machine includes the SeederForce downforce control, from Precision Planting, plus blockage sensors, and Deere’s Pro Series drill updates.

Fertilizer strategies

Alex Noll, whose 103.99 bpa yield won the 2023 contest’s Kansas dryland division, deploys some of the same strategies in soft wheat as he does in corn.

“The biggest takeaway for me is adopting a split-nutrition application,” says Noll, of Winchester, Kansas, northwest of Kansas City. He points out that many standard wheat programs call for adding a big percentage of nitrogen in the fall, or in dormancy. “Any corn grower aiming for high yields won’t put all the fertilizer on at the beginning of the season,” he asserts.

A frequent winner of the Kansas Corn Growers Corn Yield contests, Noll applies about 30% of the suggested nitrogen rates at dormancy, 30% at early green-up, and the remainder between green-up and the flag-leaf stage. 

“I want every flag leaf to be the exact same height,” says Noll, who insists that this is no different than aiming for perfectly spaced emergence on corn. “I don’t want any plant to compete with each other,” he says. “I want them to be exactly the same.” 

Whereas Noll’s farm receives about 40 inches of annual precipitation, Freeburg’s farm, near the Wyoming/Colorado/Nebraska borders, gets only about 15. His yield goal and fertilizer strategy reflect that discrepancy. 

“We’re doing more grid sampling, and even did tissue testing in 2023,” says Freeburg, who earned second place in the 2023 quality contest portion of the National Wheat Yield Contest, tallying 118.24 bpa. Performed at flag-leaf time, tissue testing may be too late in the season to address nutrient deficiencies on dryland acres. However, on fields irrigated with a center pivot system, the crop can be spoon-fed nutrition through the pivot later in the season. 

Freeburg keeps the same base fertilizer program in dryland and irrigated wheat: 40 Rock (12-40-0, with 6.5% sulfur and 1% zinc) in-furrow at planting, with an air seeder; and top-dressing in the spring, with more nitrogen, applied with a ground-rig sprayer equipped with streamer bars. “We try to have about 1.2 to 1.5 pounds of nitrogen per bushel of yield goal,” he says. 

Wesolowski soil-tests every field each year and has adopted variable-rate anhydrous ammonia, using a Raven Sidekick injection system. An NZone GL nitrogen stabilizer from AgXplore ensures the crop gets nitrogen when needed. 

“The first field I used that rate controller on, it paid for itself,” he explains. “It’s paid me back many times over.” 

As a bonus, the program has enabled Wesolowski to reduce nitrogen application across all crops.

“We’re seeing a lot more leftover nitrate on the soil test,” he says. “It’s kind of crazy how that has changed since I started using that product. It’s sticking around not only year one, but in year two, and it’s allowed me to reduce my N rate, which is great because it’s our most expensive input.”

Protect the crop

More often, farmers aiming for top yields routinely apply fungicide. Whether diseases are in play or not, fungicides seem to improve plant health, and give wheat a longer growing season to maximize grain fill and improve test weight. 

Freeburg’s fungicide program includes Priaxor (active ingredients include fluxapyroxad and pyraclostrobin) or Nexicor (active ingredients include fluxapyroxad, pyraclostrobin, and propiconazole) between the 2- to 6-leaf stage, and another application at flag leaf. “It’s more of an overall plant health package,” he says. 

Olson applies one pass of Miravis Ace (active ingredients include pydiflumetofen and propiconazole), just as the crop begins to head out. “We’ve left test strips, and even in dry years, the fungicide boosts yields,” he says. 

To maximize grain production for the 2024 crop, Noll used a plant growth regulator (PGR) at flag leaf to boot stage.

“We want to raise grain, not straw,” he says. “I think that was something I missed in 2023 and could have been the difference between 127 bushel wheat and 150 bushel or better wheat.”

Final thoughts

Although wheat acres are declining, a host of benefits remain to grow the cereal crop. Besides varying crop rotation, wheat adds carbon to the soil; breaks up disease, weed, and pest cycles; and diversifies income. 

“No doubt, we’re able to generate a lot of natural carbon by including it in a corn/soybean rotation,” says Noll, who plants double-crop soybeans in stubble right after wheat harvest. 

“And,” he adds, “it would be really difficult for me to move away from the income potential of soft wheat plus double-crop soybeans.” 

Wheat is a grass crop, like corn. Managed as such, the yield and profit potential per acre is enticing.

“Three years ago, I was ready to swear off wheat. I could get good protein and test weight, but not yield,” Wesolowski says. “I decided to give it one more try and change a few things.” In 2023, he says, his wheat enterprise produced the best yield ever. 

“It was my highest farm average ever, and I have protein and test weight to go along with it,” he says. “It is like a spring wheat farmers’ dream.”