Even with yields that crush the national average, champion corn and soybean growers admit they usually come away with more questions than answers about what goes into their record-breaking crop yields.

“We’ve been studying corn for 150 years. It’s amazing how little we know,” said Virginia farmer David Hula, who set a new record in the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) yield contest in 2019 with a yield average of 616 bushels per acre. Hula joined Randy Dowdy of Georgia, Cory Atley of Ohio and Jena and Levi Ochsner of Nebraska to talk about their record-breaking yields during a panel discussion hosted by BASF at the recent Commodity Classic in San Antonio. 

Trial and...