Photos by Holly Spangler
MIND OVER YIELD: “The hardest part about high yield is not the science. It’s not the blend of fertilities,” says LaHarpe, Ill., farmer Matt Swanson. “In the Corn Belt, on better soils, the hardest part is the operator. You have to change your mindset in order to make 300-bushel corn possible.” What’s the point of yield contests? Yield winner Matt Swanson says in the good years and the bad, he still learns and turns high yield into high profit.
Matt Swanson is a winner. Or at least, he was in 2019.
That was the year he won first place in the National Corn Yield Contest, topping out the no-till nonirrigated class with 330.43 bushels per acre on his LaHarpe, Ill., farm.