Dryland Winter Wheat Winner Profile

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 dryland winter wheat category.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (DTN) -- In Oregon's Willamette River Valley, friendly competition amongst neighboring wheat farmers has reached national proportions yet again. Steve VanGrunsven, a farmer from Forest Grove, Oregon, took home the title of "Bin Buster" in the dryland winter wheat category of the 2024 National Wheat Yield Contest. His winning yield of 170.63 bushels per acre (bpa) topped a record-setting 365 entries in the category.

During the past five seasons, farmers from this region have yielded nine national awards in the contest, including one Bin Buster each year. This year marks VanGrunsven's second time to ascend to the top of a category. As a first-time entrant in 2021, he was named Bin Buster in the irrigated winter wheat category with a yield of 192.73 bpa.

"We can get really good yields and really good quality here in our geography," VanGrunsven said. "In the years I haven't won, I was beat by the neighbors, so I guess you'd say we're showcasing Oregon's soft white winter wheat production pretty well. I feel like we're fairly open with each other about what we're doing, but I guess maybe we don't tell each other everything."

Now in its ninth year, the yield contest organized by the National Wheat Foundation (NWF) 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.

This year, the top six entries in the dryland winter wheat category ranged in yield from 170.63 bpa to 152.32 bpa. The winning farmers represented six different states and both soft white and soft red winter wheat varieties grown from coast to coast.

YIELD BEFORE BEAUTY

VanGrunsven planted Shine, a soft white winter wheat variety from Limagrain Cereal Seeds. The company describes it as a low-protein wheat broadly adapted for the Pacific Northwest. Although the variety's straw strength is best intended for intermediate-to-low rainfall environments, the wheat's yield potential can flex under high rainfall conditions.

"Shine was new to us in 2021. It looked good in the university variety trials. That caught our eye, and we started growing it," VanGrunsven said. "To be flat-out honest, it's an ugly looking wheat. It doesn't look nice in the field, but it surprises at harvest. Shine seems to consistently produce just a couple more bushels per acre than some of the other varieties."

Winter wheat isn't VanGrunsven's primary crop. Instead, it's part of a longer rotation that includes grass seed, clover seed and other cover crop seed, as well as some cannery row crops and corn silage.

"We use wheat to help clean up the ground," he said. "We can plant all the way to December and still get a good crop the next year, so if we get a late corn crop, we can still get wheat in behind it."

VanGrunsven's winning entry was planted on Oct. 7, 2023, in a field that had been in silage corn. He used a John Deere 8350 grain drill to plant at a rate of 1 million to 1.1 million seeds per acre on 6-inch row spacing. The seed was treated with CruiserMaxx Vibrance, which combines four active ingredients including three fungicides and one insecticide.

"In our area, there's a lot of conventional tillage, but we find that it helps with good stand establishment," he explained. "We really want that seed to jump out of the ground at a similar time."

Farming just 60 miles or so from the Pacific Ocean, VanGrunsven described the climate as "fairly temperate." Winters are generally mild with most rainfall, typically 40 inches annually, occurring during the winter and spring months. He noted that through the months of June, July and August, rainfall events are rare.

"If we get an inch total in three months, that's a wet summer for us," he said. "But having that good moisture through the winter and then that warm, dry summer really helps with harvest and our quality, whether we're growing grain or seed or vegetables."

PUSHING FOR A PREMIUM

The soils of the Willamette Valley are deep and consist mostly of silt loams and silty clay loams. Because VanGrunsven is aiming to produce a low-protein soft white winter wheat, managing fertility is crucial.

"We need enough nitrogen to have a good crop, but we don't want excessive nitrogen there at the end to push our protein too high," he explained. "For our export markets in Asia who pay a premium for our wheat, the goal is 7% to 9% protein instead of 10% plus."

Nutrients that remain from the previous crop feed the wheat through the winter. Once the wheat crop breaks winter dormancy, VanGrunsven makes one or two top-dress applications that include SuperU, a stabilized urea product, along with smaller amounts of potassium and sulfur. He said his primary objective is keeping the plants healthy and growing. Stripe rust and Septoria tritici are his greatest disease adversaries, which he controls throughout the season with three to four fungicide applications.

"We're just doing what we can to maintain the yield potential of the genetics," he added. "Rarely can we gain it, so the longer we can keep those plants healthy, the better the grain fill."

Mother Nature was kind to VanGrunsven's wheat crop, providing a "Goldilocks" season when conditions were never too wet or too dry, too cold or too hot.

"We didn't get much stress during the growing season, and when we saw test weights in the 62- to 63-pound range, we knew we were going to be in good shape. The contest field did get one more fungicide application than many of the rest, and I think that made the difference in the end."

VanGrunsven will join other yield contest winners at a reception hosted by the National Wheat Foundation during the 2025 Commodity Classic in Denver. He said before winning in 2021, he had never attended the event, but now it's something he and his wife, Anna, look forward to every year.

"There's lots of technology on display, so getting to see what's coming and how we might use it is valuable," he said. "Also, while we do talk to the neighbors about what they're trying with their wheat, it's always interesting to learn from guys in other parts of the country. We've learned some stuff from our contest field that usually gets applied to more acres."

Winners in the 2024 National Wheat Yield Contest Dryland Winter Wheat Category include:

Bin Buster: Steve VanGrunsven

Forest Grove, Oregon

Variety: Limagrain Cereal Seeds Shine

Yield: 170.63 bpa

First Place: Jeffery Krohn

Owendale, Michigan

Variety: DF Seeds 271

Yield: 170.10 bpa

Second Place: Clint Zenner

Genesee, Idaho

Variety: Limagrain Cereal Seeds Shine

Yield: 167.03 bpa

Third Place: Garrett Warren

Dayton, Washington

Variety: Limagrain Cereal Seeds 50% Shine/50% Jefe

Yield: 164.68 bpa

Fourth Place: Scott Truszkowski

Stewartsville, New Jersey

Variety: Dyna-Gro 9070

Yield: 152.33 bpa

Fifth Place: Mark Deysher

Bath, Pennsylvania

Variety: Seedway SW65

Yield: 152.32 bpa

More on the 2024 National Wheat Yield Contest can be found here: https://www.dtnpf.com/…

To see profiles of other winners:

"Irrigated Spring Wheat Winner," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

For more information on the yield contest and to view past winners, go to: https://www.wheatcontest.org/…

Jason Jenkins can be reached at jason.jenkins@dtn.com

Follow him on social platform X @JasonJenkinsDTN

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