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If your wheat is looking good this spring and you want to put it to the test, enter the new-in-2020 Michigan Wheat Yield Contest to find and recognize the outstanding “wheat warriors” in the Great Lakes State.
The Michigan Wheat Program launched its own contest, modeled on the successful 5-year-old National Wheat Yield Contest sponsored by the National Wheat Foundation (NWF).
We know Michigan wheat farmers produce well above the national average of 49 bushels per acre, most notably in 2016 when farmers and weather conspired to an average 89 bushels per acre yield!
What we don’t know, is who grew it best in Michigan and what they did to achieve those yields.
The Michigan Yield Contest offers Michigan growers an opportunity to compete against one another, as a way to inspire creative thinking to solve production challenges in Michigan. Winners will be chosen as a straight-up highest per bushel yield in irrigated and dryland wheat for both red and white wheat.
To make contest entry easy, Michigan has partnered with the NWF to utilize their contest registration form and entry process. Michigan farmers’ data will be used by the Michigan Wheat Program to determine the home-state winners.
If you are a Michigan wheat farmer, you pay into the Michigan Wheat Program check-off so you do not have to pay National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) dues. Since the Michigan Wheat Program is a member of NAWG, your NAWG membership is waived.
To sign up for the Michigan contest and the National Wheat Yield Contest (they must go together), visit the NAWG website at yieldcontest.wheatfoundation.org. The $125 entry fee is due May 15th each year. This is the final deadline.
Usually, the entry fee will be covered by ag business. National sponsors of the contest that also cover registration fees are: Bayer/WestBred, BASF and Corteva/Pioneer.
If you are utilizing one of these companies, complete your registration form but DO NOT PAY. The registration fees will be covered after the rest of your registration is submitted.
Michigan’s top winners will receive free registration and lodging at the Great Lakes Crop Summit in Mt. Pleasant each January. Also, recognition and awards at the Michigan Wheat Program’s Annual Meeting each winter.
The Michigan Wheat Program is a state-check off program voted in by the state’s wheat farmers to assess each bushel of wheat grown and sold. The funds from the program are utilized to further the wheat industry in the state benefitting the state’s nearly 8,000 wheat farmers who grow about 450,000 acres of wheat annually producing about a 40 million bushel crop.