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Illinois corn yield champion likes ‘to see what a field can do’
The Illinois irrigated corn yield champion says weather and plant technology help grow more corn per acre. Phillip Friedrich tells Brownfield a five-inch rain fall shortly after the 2017 crop emerged made him doubtful that it would amount to much. It did much better than expected.
“The ear size was about normal, the rows around, the ear length all seemed fairly normal, but it just seemed like the kernel size was a little bit above average,” Friedrich told Brownfield Ag News in his farm office. “The cooler August just extended the fill period a little bit longer.”
Friedrich’s 320-bushe-per-acre winning yield was with DEKALB 66-75, a tall hybrid that he says is able to catch and convert more sunlight in the growing season.
Friedrich says he enters yield contests for the challenge of seeing what a field can do.
“It seems like we end up growing more bushels, and maybe that may cause us some issues price-wise,” said Friedrich, who farms in Tazewell County in central Illinois, “but it’s the only way to try to increase your income sometimes.”
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