Gary Neal Porter Supervisors Rosa Sondrag FFA Advisor Central Decuter School Joyce Meinecke Crop Insurance Agent Great American Greg Humphrey Technician NRCS GARY NEAL PORTER PORTER FARMS Mercer, Mo. 279.4667 BU/A Pioneer 33P67 Harvest pop.: 38,000 Harvester: JD 9600 It was a bittersweet harvest for Gary Neal Porter. He won this category and topped his yield goal of 275 bu. But he didn’t get to share the feat with his father, whom he also calls his best friend and lifelong business partner. He passed away in October. His dad and the hired men didn’t always appreciate the extra work that comes with test and contest plots. “Everybody gets a bit put out with me,” Porter confesses, citing the effort spent on measuring and weighing, among other tasks. “It always helps when we win because everybody’s happy.” He recalls one season his dad was so tickled they achieved a 250- bu.-plus yield that he took the whole crew to a local restaurant for all-you-can-eat pancakes for $1. “We just shut everything off and went to a restaurant. We didn’t know it was a winner, we just knew it was real good.” Porter uses his plots to experiment. “I’ve improved my overall yield at least 20%,” he estimates. This year’s winning entry came from a little peninsula that juts out into the Grand River. “The dirt in the middle is the best I’ve got. You never can go wrong with it. You just plant and it comes up.”He first built ridges three years ago to warm soil quicker. “It keeps the plants a little drier,” he explains. Porter’s fertilizer program included 220 units of nitrogen, 60 units of phosphorus and 80 of potash, with an 18-46-60 formulation broadcast preplant. Anhydrous ammonia was also applied before planting. Dry and fairly warm conditions allowed him to plant earlier than usual, with the contest plot put in April 15. Starter fertilizer was one practice he quickly adopted for all his corn. “It was such a good improvement that I went ahead and did it on all my acres the next year,” he says. “It seemed like instantly I picked up 12 to 18 bu.” Porter likes YieldGard and Poncho for protecting the crop. He recalls the first year he tried YieldGard, when he had only one bag for a test plot. Corn borers hit hard, laying unprotected hybrids flat and giving that lone plot a 42-bu. advantage. Porter also used Capture insecticide this year, with Harness sprayed preemergence for weed control. He also sidedressed liquid nitrogen.
	Supervisors Aaron Dufelmeier County Extension Agent University of Ill. Extension Todd F. Behrends Fieldman Sangamon Valley FBFM Meghan Curless Crop/Hort Educator University of Ill. Extension WAYNE TOMHAVE TOMHAVE FARMS Jacksonville, Ill. 263.7133 BU/A Pioneer 31N28 Harvest pop.: 31,000 Harvester: Case IH 2366 Wayne Tomhave calls 2004 a “once in a lifetime season.” Placing nationally for the first time, this grower jokes that his biggest mistake was not selling the whole crop in May. “Once that corn started growing, it never stopped.” It tasseled the second week of June and left the field at about 18% moisture in September. His ridge-till system curbs erosion of his fine silt-loam soil on gently rolling terrain. “The biggest advantage we see is the near-ideal place to plant corn on top of that ridge the next spring,” he says. Tomhave injected anhydrous ammonia into the ridge with a tool that can also apply dry potash and phosphorus at the same time. His planter is equipped with Sukup ridge guiders, like trash whippers, to sweep stubble or dirt clods from the ridge. “Our goals aren’t to win the contest, but it does encourage you to keep specific records on specific fields,” Tomhave notes. “It’s a learning tool for us.”		Supervisors Gerald G. Bryan County Extension Agent University of Mo. Extension Gary Kight Self-Employed Crop Insurance Agent Larry J. Hamm Vice President Union Planters Bank JERRY COX Delta, Mo. 261.9059 BU/A Pioneer 33M54 Harvest pop.: 33,000 Harvester: Case IH 2388 Jerry Cox’s top yields weren’t quite as high as last year, when he snagged first place in this class and third place in Ridge-Till Irrigated. But overall yields improved greatly. “It went pretty smooth this year probably because we didn’t have so much rain,” he reports. “It was almost ideal for us.” Cox strives for a perfect seedbed and getting the fertilizer on at the right time and in the right position so it’s available when the crop needs it. While he doesn’t pamper all his corn like the contest fields, Cox does depend on Amplify L seed emergence aid, starter fertilizer, zinc and split nitrogen application across the board. “I don’t think we overapply anything,” he says, noting he fertilizes according to soil tests and yields. Higher fertilizer applications yielded no response; it was a matter of getting it on at the right time. He notes that yields stagnated after he topped his state contest in 1992 with 249 bu. Attention to detail allowed him to finally break that barrier in 2002.