E236: Celebrating Bin-Busting Wheat Growers

Each year, the National Wheat Yield Contest, hosted by the National Wheat Foundation, attracts top growers from across the country to compete to grow the healthiest, and largest, wheat crop in the nation. The 2024 results are officially in, and farmers in the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Plains managed to bring home many of the top accolades, and though 2024 didn’t quite offer record-setting conditions, some of the yields weren’t too far behind all-time highs.But we’re interested in more than just who the winners are– we want to know how they achieved their bin-busting results. Luckily, this week we’re joined by DTN Crops Editor Jason Jenkins who’s had the chance to connect with the four overall winners in the irrigated and dryland winter wheat and irrigated and dryland spring wheat classes. He’ll give us the inside scoop on the growers and to which practices, products, and conditions they attribute their success. We’ll also talk about the newer quality aspects of the competition, and how winning wheat is processed and evaluated for food quality attributes. We’ll also talk about a new contest category that allows growers to submit digital yield results, a category that contest organizers are planning to expand in 2025. Then, Jason will look ahead to current conditions and the 2025 wheat crop, and offer insight on other stories he’s following in the meantime.