Farmamerica 100 Bushel Soybean Challenge

It was in the fall of 2018 Farmamerica's site manager Gene Kuntz and Mike Blaine an agronomist with Beck Hybrids embarked on a mission to achieve an almost unheard of soybean yield in this area. They called it the "100 Bushel Soybean Challenge." Farmamerica is Minnesota's Agricultural interpretative Center. The mission of Farmemerica is to tell the story of Agriculture in Minnesota, past, present and future.

The goal of the 100 Bushel Challenge is to harvest 100 bushel of soybeans an acre off of a  five acre plot at Farmamerica. This year the plot yielded 80.1 bushel an acre! New production techniques are being used called "Next Level Management." They include high quality seed, pre-and post-emergence herbicides, timely fungicide applications, and foliar feeding micronutrients during the growing season.

This year Next Level Management returned an additional 22 bushel of soybeans an acre. The cost of the additional inputs totaled $73 an acre and the income increased $189 an acre! That is an excellent return on investment. The Next Level Management and 100 Bushel Challenge will continue at Farmamerica in 2020. Crystal Valley Coop and Beck's Hybrids will be competing in the 100 Bushel Soybean Challenge.