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Jerry
and John Griffith have participated in NCGA’s National
Corn Yield Contest for more than a decade.
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NCGA:
First Deadline for Corn Yield Contest Rapidly Approaching
(5-28-04)
With the first entry
deadline for the National Corn Yield Contest (NCYC) just around
the corner, corn growers across the country are gearing up for what
promises to be another exciting contest. Growers whose entry forms
are postmarked by June 15 pay just $55 to participate in the contest,
which is sponsored by the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA).
Entries postmarked between
June 16 and July 1 will be charged $65, while the third and final
postmark deadline of Aug. 1 will carry an $85 registration fee.
Jerry Griffith, a Mayfield, Ky., farmer who won first place in the
contest’s A Ridge Till Non-Irrigated class last year with
a yield of 235.5 bushels per acre, said his participation in NCYC
has helped him become a better farmer.
“There are plenty
of benefits to entering the contest,” said Griffith, who serves
on the Kentucky Corn Growers Association (KyCGA) board of directors.
“We learn what works and what doesn’t in our contest
plot and we can apply that to our other corn. It’s also good
because we can see what other farmers are doing and see if those
ideas might work for us.”
Griffith said he and
his brother, John, have been active in the contest for about 10
years. A fellow KyCGA board member, Scott Wilferd, first made Griffith
aware of the contest. “I saw in the paper where Wilferd had
won the contest and it looked really interesting,” he said.
“We like the challenge of it. It’s a challenge to outdo
yourself and we’re always anticipating better yields than
we had the year before.”
Griffith said his success
in the contest has prompted younger farmers in the area to seek
his advice on growing techniques. “I get lots of calls from
people around here who want to know what we’re doing different,”
said Griffith, who uses Great Lakes seed. “A lot of it is
just good common sense, but there are little extra things that you
can do to get better yields. And all of those little things add
up.”
While many states in
the Corn Belt have been pounded recently by torrential rains and
flooding, Griffith said his farm has actually been a bit on the
dry side. “We’ve been fortunate so far,” he said,
adding that most of his corn is already waste high. “We’d
been pretty dry, but we got about a half-inch of rain yesterday
and that really helped. Our corn looks pretty good right now.”
But Griffith knows harvest
is still months away, and he says anything can happen between now
and then. “If you don’t get help from nature, everything
else you do is in vain,” he said. “There are so many
things that you don’t have any control over. So you do your
best with the things you can control.”
For more information
or to obtain an entry form, call Judy Hall at (636) 733-9004, or
go to www.ncga.com/02profits/CYC/main.