Baker Community Farms of MacGregor won the 2021 Manitoba Corn Yield Competition with a yield of 303.3 bushels an acre growing Bayer’s DKC33-37RIB.
The feat is remarkable for several reasons, including that it’s the eighth win for Baker over the competition’s 51-year history and that such a high yield came despite a major drought.
Competition results were announced following the Manitoba Crop Alliance’s (MCA) second annual meeting held online Feb. 17.
Corn is one of five crops the MCA collects a checkoff from to fund research to boost farmer productivity.
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Toews Family Enterprise Ltd., also of MacGregor, placed second with a yield of 299.2 bushels an acre. It grew P8588AM.
Toews won the competition in 2020 with a yield of 281.9 bushels an acre.
Oak Ridge Holdings Ltd., of Roseisle, took third with 274.0 bushels an acre. It grew DKC31-85RIB.
Fourth went to WesMar Seeds Inc., of Altona with 253.9 bushels an acre growing TH6185 VT2P.
Ponsin Farms of St. Eustache was fifth with a yield of 245.5 bushels an acre grown with the variety P7527AM.
Baker won $1,000 provided by Bayer, a wall plaque and its name on the competition trophy.
Second- and third-place winners won $500 each and received wall plaques.
The Manitoba Corn Growers Association started the competition in 1971 to encourage corn production in the province.
The association was one of five that merged in 2020 to form the MCA.
Entries are based on the collection of cobs from two 50-foot rows side by side.
While it’s not representative of field yields it does demonstrate yield potential.
In 2021 (with 96 per cent of the data keyed in) Manitoba had more than 359,000 insured acres of grain corn, up 26 per cent from 2020.
Manitoba’s average insured corn yield in 2021 was 106 bushels an acre, down 18 per cent from the 10-year average of 127.
The record of 146 bushels an acre was set in 2016.
Coincidently, Baker won the competition in 1988, another drought year, with a yield of 142 bushels an acre.
It also set the competition record of 306.4 bushels an acre in 2017. That’s just 3.1 bushels an acre more than Baker’s winning 2021 yield.
Baker also won in 2011 and 2013 and then three years in a row — 2015 to 2017 and again in 2019.
