Colorado Corn Yield Winners

The National Corn Yield Contest is now in its 50th year and remains NCGA’s most popular program for members. Participation in the contest remained strong in 2014 with more than 8,000 entries received. Colorado winners included in Irrigated, No-Till/Strip Till Category Lenz Farms of Holyoke. Lenz Farm partner Jim Lenz shares more about 304 bushels per acre and the circumstances surrounding that excellent yield.
Lenz: “Mostly just the perfect year for us. It got off to a good start — we lost a little bit of population — the soil was a little bit cold immediately after we planted it but other than that it was perfect. It never got too hot this summer. That is something that we generally have a problem with is too many hot days and I think you lose yield every day that is over 95 degrees. We just didn’t have much of that this year. It was a mild pleasant summer. It was a long harvest season. We got good grain fill — the kernels got extremely deep. It was just a great year.”
The other three category winners were in non-irrigated: Bryan Hofmeister from Haxtun with 150 bushels per acre. Non-irrigated, No-Till/Strip-Till winner was Harry Brinkema from Holyoke with 153 bushes per acre and irrigated category winner was Steve Mauro from Pueblo with 319 bushels per acre.