Contestants in the 2024 Illinois wheat yield contest used 10 different varieties and multiple tillage practices.
But, one thing the 16 harvest forms returned to the Illinois Wheat Association (IWA) for this year’s contest had in common is they all surpassed the century mark.
“We received 16 entries that were all over 100 bushels per acre,” said Megan Dieken, IWA executive director. “The excitement around Illinois wheat is growing and we are getting more farmers involved in areas we don’t normally grow wheat.”
IWA unveiled the results of this year’s wheat yield contest Aug. 1 during its Summer Wheat Forum at the American Farm Heritage Museum in Greenville (Bond County).
David Justison of Montgomery County won this year’s contest with a top entry of 151.64 bushels per acre. Wendell Good, Tazewell County, was second (137.3 bushels); Kurt Sudholt, Clinton County, was third (136.4 bushels); Charlie Meier, Washington County, placed fourth (135.4 bushels); and Andy Schumacher, Shelby County, rounded out the top five with a yield of 127.4 bushels.
“We’ve had a very good year with weather and that’s really what made the wheat so good,” Justison told the RFD Radio Network at the forum.
“It was planted October 4, it came up well, grew well in the fall, we didn’t have many weed issues and I put nitrogen and fungicide on in the spring,” he noted. “It just looked fantastic all season long.”
Justison and his family grow about 1,500 acres of wheat each season and have no plans to change the rotation despite lower prices.
“We’ve been growing wheat for years,” he said. “One of the reasons is we have a lot of rolling ground and we need to keep the soil in its place. We use wheat as our cover crop and then plant double-crop beans. It’s worked out really well for us.”
IWA received 47 entries from 10 counties for this year’s contest. A total of 16 harvest forms were returned and all surpassed 100 bushels per acre. The use of conventional tillage, minimum tillage and no-till was pretty evenly split among the top 16 entries.
Seven of the top 10 wheat varieties used in the contest were AgriMAXX and there was one each from FS InSPIRE, Haas Seed and Pioneer.
Overall, the Illinois wheat yield averaged 83 bushels per acre statewide in 2024, which is the second-largest in a season but down 4 bushels from the record of 87 bushels recorded in 2023.
Illinois farmers harvested 700,000 acres and produced 58.1 million bushels of wheat in 2024, both down from 2023. Wheat growers previously set three consecutive records for the statewide average yield from 2021-23.
