U.S. grower hits 600 bu/ac in corn yield contest

VIRGINIA — It used to be that 300 bushels per acre of grain corn was the holy grail of yields. Then U.S. yield contest after yield contest blew that away and the new goal became 500 bu/ac. But that too was achieved. Late last year, a Virginia crop farmer managed to break the 600 bu/ac in the 2019 U.S. Corn Yield Contest.

David Hula — who farms at least 4,200 acres at Charles City, Virginia — yielded 616.2 bu/ac on at least 10 acres of strip, min, mulch, ridge-till irrigated land using Pioneer seed P1197YHR. He broke the world record of 542.3 bu/ac, which he had set in 2017. At least three other U.S. growers broke 500 bu/ac.

Hula, who had about 52,000 plants per acre on the winning acreage, conducted weekly tissue samples on what he hopes is award-winning corn. Hula has said that he believes that 800 bu/ac corn is possible.

To put 616 bu/ac into Ontario perspective, that record-busting yield is three-and-a-half times higher than Ontario’s record average yield of 169 bu/ac set in 2015. It’s also almost twice as much as the highest yield of 334 bu/ac set in an Ontario yield in the 2015 DuPont Pioneer Corn Yield Challenge. There is no longer a yield challenge in Ontario.