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South Dakota soybean yield champ pays close attention to whole farm
Results in the 2017 South Dakota Soybean Yield Contest reflect the challenges of the state’s growing season. None of the contest entries broke 100 bushels, although Kory Standy’s soybean yields came the closest. The southcentral South Dakota grower claimed the top yield spot with nearly 92-and-a-quarter bushels per acre.
“Where I was at we had so many 105 degree days,” Standy told Brownfield Ag News, following the award presentation in Sioux Falls. “I had hail come through; I had to 8 to 10 percent hail damage through it and everything else. My overall yield was the best I’ve ever had, but I was kind of hoping for the 100-bushel, but I didn’t get it.”
South Dakota was gripped by drought for a major part of the growing season. Some of the effects were mitigated by underground drip irrigation used by Standy.
He gets agronomy ideas from experts and other growers, and recommends that farmers listen to their colleagues and not be fearful of trying something for the first time.
“You go to all these, you listen to what people say,” said Standy. “You’ve got to keep your ears open and you’ve got to take your soil tests, you’ve got to take your tissue samples. You’ve just got to baby sit [your crop] and you’ve just got to listen to what your plant’s telling you.”
Standy says he doesn’t make any more of a fuss over contest acres than he makes over his whole farm. He says he doesn’t have areas of extraordinary fertility that outperform other parts of his farm. But severe drought resulted in widely varied field averages on plots separated by only a few miles.
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