Record winter wheat yields

The fourth year of the Great Lakes Yield Enhancement Network (YEN) marked another successful chapter of this innovative program. The concept of the YEN, which began in the U.K. in 2012 by ADAS, encourages collaboration among farmers, researchers, industry supporters, and multiple agricultural organizations to share crop management approaches and ultimately improve yields.

With almost 200 farmers completing the program, 2024 marked the biggest Great Lakes YEN year. Half of this year’s participants were in Ontario, with the rest spread across the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and beyond, including Missouri, Kentucky, and Washington state. The program has captured data from over 480 fields, creating a dataset that researchers can analyze and answering more questions about how farmers can grow higher-yielding winter wheat.

SEASONAL OVERVIEW

Winter wheat planting was delayed in 2023 due to a delay in soybean maturity. Persistent dry conditions through much of September also delayed planting for some farmers. Continual rainfall in mid to late October caused further delays. Winter conditions were favourable, resulting in excellent winter survival. Dormancy was broken early; however, cool temperatures and persistent rainfall throughout the spring delayed nitrogen applications. Herbicide applications were also delayed, leading to bluegrass and chickweed issues.

Disease levels were low early in the growing season, but stripe rust spread rapidly as fields approached flag leaf, requiring growers to apply a fungicide. Warm, humid conditions through pollination also prompted fungicide applications for protection against Fusarium head blight. Other diseases and pests (such as powdery mildew, septoria, and cereal leaf beetle) were present but well-controlled with timely crop protection applications. Harvest started early in much of the region, but as harvest progressed, rainfall prolonged harvest for some. Overall, 2024 winter wheat yields across the province were average, with good quality and low DON levels.

LEARNING FROM THE DATA

The Great Lakes YEN is not only a competition; it’s also an opportunity for farmers to learn more about how individual fields perform, how their crops develop over the season, and how their agronomy practices impact yield by diving deep into their collected data.

At the 2025 Ontario wrap-up meeting, held in London, Ontario, on January 23, participants heard from Joanna Follings (cereals specialist, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness) and Dennis Pennington (wheat systems specialist, Michigan State University Extension), who completed several in-depth analyses with the now four years of collected data.

This year, one focus of data analysis was comparing how different practices affect yield specifically based on the field’s soil type. For instance, when comparing different tillage practices, fields with higher clay content tended to have higher yields when under conservation tillage (at least 30 per cent residue cover), while sandier soils showed higher yields under minimum (more than 15 per cent residue cover) or no-till.

As with past wrap-up meetings, participants discussed the difference in the cost of production between the highest and lowest-yielding growers in the program. While the average spend per acre was higher for the top 20 per cent of yielders, the higher yields achieved by those growers translated to a significantly lower spend per bushel of grain. Additional analysis showed that top yielders generally spent more on purchasing nitrogen inputs but less on crop protection products such as herbicides and fungicides.

The 70 attendees also heard from Dr. Josh Nasielski (assistant professor, University of Guelph) and Dr. Manni Singh (associate professor of cropping systems agronomy, Michigan State University). Nasielski was responsible for creating the crop model in 2021 that uses a few key pieces of collected data from each participant’s field to calculate a maximum yield potential estimate for each Great Lakes YEN field.

He explained how different soil parameters, the date the crop reaches key growth development stages, environmental conditions, and the amount of water available to the crop drastically alter the field’s maximum yield potential. Later, Singh presented findings from his research into row width and seeding practices, which was of particular interest to attendees as the four years of YEN data have shown how different planting practices, such as earlier seeding dates, narrower row widths, and lower seeding rates positively affect yields.

NEW FOR 2025

Additional resources are available to participating farmers and their agronomists in 2025, including access to several interactive dashboards. These dashboards allow participants to interact with the four years of collected data in easy-to-understand charts and graphs. Users can customize the data they see, narrowing it down based on geographic region and soil type, so they can focus on specific data relevant to their fields and identify relevant trends over time.

The Great Lakes YEN leadership team is also gearing up for the 2025 summer networking tour, taking place in England. Tour participants will have the opportunity to meet several long-standing YEN participants, learn about their environmental conditions and management practices, and attend the U.K.’s largest arable farming event.

Thank you to all the participating farmers and agronomists who worked together to make the 2024 season a tremendous success. Thank you also to the sponsors who support this innovative program, without which the Great Lakes YEN could not exist. The 2025 Great Lakes YEN program is now in progress, with 150 fields involved across the Great Lakes region of Ontario and the United States. As the program continues to grow, the collective efforts of the Great Lakes YEN community are paving the way for more resilient and productive cropping systems.
Alexandra Dacey, MSc., is Grain Farmers of Ontario’s agronomy projects coordinator.

The Great Lakes YEN was created in partnership with Grain Farmers of Ontario, Michigan State University, Michigan Wheat Program, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, and the University of Guelph. •