continued on page 8 ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER COVER STORY 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. 2024 WINNERS The winners of the Great Lakes YEN competition’s highest yield are: • Nick Suwyn (Wayland, Michigan) – 171.99 bu/ac • Jeff Krohn (Elkton, Michigan) – 170.1 bu/ac • John Kilbourne (Mount Brydges, Ontario) – 160.2 bu/ac The winners for the highest potential yield achieved are: • Jeff Krohn (Elkton, Michigan) – 155 per cent • Tim Layton (Charleston, Missouri) – 105 per cent • Rich D’Arcy (Kingston, Michigan) – 105 per cent Participants collect multiple in-field samples, including leaf tissue samples, which are analyzed for quality and nutrient content. Photo: Adam Pfeffer
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