Editor's Note: U.S. wheat farmers entered the National Wheat Yield Contest in record numbers in 2024. DTN is featuring details about the fields and farmers and their winning entries in several profiles. Today, we present the Bin Buster winner in the irrigated spring wheat category.
**
DECATUR, Ill. (DTN) -- Jess Blatchford entered the 2023 National Wheat Yield Contest on a whim. The Baker City, Oregon, farmer entered the 2024 contest with a goal to win.
His enthusiasm paid off. Blatchford took home the win in the irrigated spring wheat category, earning the "Bin Buster" title with 174.74 bushels per acre (bpa) of WestBred WB6341, a soft white spring wheat variety.
"I had so much fun with the contest the previous year that I actually tried this year," he said, noting his 2023 entry garnered first place with 164.5 bpa. The National Wheat Foundation yield contest is designed to encourage wheat growers to strive for high yield, quality and profit while trying new and innovative management strategies. DTN/Progressive Farmer is the official media outlet of the competition.
SHORT SEASON WINDOWS
When it comes to crop management, winter wheat is like a marathon, whereas spring wheat is more of a sprint. "The key to making spring wheat yield is selecting a variety that suits the climate of the valley and giving the crop what it needs in a timely manner," he said. "The contest helps us see what happens when we do that."
Blatchford farms in the high desert country of eastern Oregon. His winning field of wheat was in the Baker Valley, which sits at an elevation of about 3,400 feet and 3 miles from mountain ranges that soar to 9,000 feet. The iconic Oregon Trail rolled right through this valley, but it took the discovery of gold for settlers to claim it as home.
Today, he estimates farming occupies about 20,000 acres of the small valley. "We have more cattle than we do people in the county," he noted.
"It's a good climate for wheat. We were hot this year with 10 days above 100 degrees (Fahrenheit), but we only had three nights all summer long that it didn't drop below 60 degrees," he said.
Low winter temperatures and a dry climate take care of most of the wheat disease issues. A seed treatment is used, and a routine fungicide treatment goes out to head off potential issues with rust.
The valley only receives 6 to 8 inches of rainfall each year, but irrigation balances the scale. In total, Blatchford applied 18 to 20 inches of water to the crop through sprinklers. Water comes mostly from deep wells, with some mountain water in the spring and early summer.
"My farm was formed off an alluvial fan. So, I have areas that have good, deep soils and other areas that only have about 5 inches of topsoil with a lot of river gravel and rock," he said. Wheat (both winter and spring) and potatoes are the predominant crops on the farm. About five years ago, field corn entered the rotation as short-season hybrids (78- to 80-day relative maturity) made genetic advancements.
ROCK THE ROTATION
The wheat contest field was planted to potatoes in 2022 and corn in 2023. Spring wheat tends to be planted behind corn since corn harvest comes late in the season.
"We have a lot of residual fertility after potatoes. About what we put on the corn is what it takes off. So, we soil test to make sure what's left and base applications on that," he said.
This year's entry received 125 pounds of nitrogen (N), 41 pounds of potassium (K), 44 pounds of sulfur (S), 20 pounds of magnesium (Mg) and 7 pounds of manganese (MN) per acre prior to seeding. Around late May, just before leaf extension, Blatchford dropped another 25 pounds of N, 10 pounds of phosphorus (P) and 17 pounds of K through the high-clearance sprayer in a pass with herbicide and fungicide.
Canadian and Russian thistle are troublemakers, but the bigger weed challenge is cereal rye. It came in with hay decades ago and before Blatchford farmed the land. He's spent countless hours using a rope-wick on sections of land in attempts to keep it cleaned up.
"If there was a yield contest for cereal rye, I'd probably win that, too," Blatchford joked. "It is one of the reasons we put corn into the rotation. It forces us to have more spring-planted crops that break the pattern. With Roundup Ready corn, we can get some of that sprayed out."
Seeding in 6-inch rows also helps limit weed pressure. The winning entry was seeded at approximately 120 pounds per acre.
This is soft wheat country. Most of Blatchford's production ends up in the export market. Livestock feedlots that buy and grind wheat for feed have also become an important customer in recent years.
"I cut the wheat about as high as I can get away with for the grain and then come back with the draper header on the swather to windrow all the straw and bale it," he said, explaining that feedlots were buying it as bedding before they realized cattle found it palatable.
Not only has the straw provided another revenue stream, but it helps with residue management. High-yielding wheat has a side effect. "We're getting 5.5 tons (per acre) of straw out here. Trying to get that all worked in is cost prohibitive from a fuel standpoint," he said.
While the climate may be right for wheat, weather is also his biggest challenge. "We can get frost any month of the year. We've had late-June frost take potatoes back down to ground level. We've had frost in August. Fortunately, they usually don't happen in the same year, but we definitely have a short season," he said. Access to 200,000 bushels of on-site grain storage helps streamline harvest and allows the flexibility to deliver when time and markets allow.
Blatchford said his winning entry was planted on one of his better fields and that it looked good all year long.
"You never know what you're going to have until you get the combine out in the field. Even then, you can have some that looks beautiful that just doesn't have much in it and some that doesn't look great and it's really good," he said. "Luckily, where I did my test plot this year, it happened to look good, and it was good."
**
Winners in the 2024 National Wheat Yield Contest Spring Wheat Irrigated Category include:
-- Bin Buster: Jess Blatchford
Baker City, Oregon
Variety: WestBred WB6341
Yield: 174.74 bpa
-- First Place: Dallin Wilcox
Rexburg, Idaho
Variety: WestBred WB7589
Yield: 169.94 bpa
-- Second Place: Joel Zwainz
Reardan, Washington
Variety: WSU Tekoa
Yield: 165.35 bpa
**
To find the DTN article about all the winners, go to
To find more details on the National Wheat Yield Contest, go to https://www.wheatcontest.org/….
Pamela Smith can be reached at Pamela.smith@dtn.com
Follow her on social platform X @PamSmithDTN
(c) Copyright 2024 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.
