Yield and Quality Contest entry deadline is August 31st
July 27, 2023
Johnna Ringkob, a new member of the South Dakota Soybean staff, oversees the South Dakota Soybean Yield Contest. “I am learning that [the contest] is a great opportunity that South Dakota Soybean uses to promote producers in exploring new practices to improve their soybean yield and soybean quality across the state,” said Ringkob, market development and research director at South Dakota Soybean.
Just like it sounds, the Yield and Quality contest is a chance for growers to determine who grows the most soybeans on each acre, but Ringkob says the purpose of the event goes beyond that.
“The yield contest is designed to encourage the development of new and innovative management practices,” said Ringkob, in an interview with the South Dakota Soybean Network. “We then, in the office, gather all the data that we collect from what [growers] send back from their yield contest submissions and then we make that available to producers across the state so that producers in other areas can know specifically what’s working in their areas, say doing a no-till soybean, or if irrigation is better for their area.”
As the name implies, the contest is about yield, but there’s another important component to the competition. Every yield contest entry is eligible for the quality part of the competition. “We just ask that you submit a soybean sample with all the information about the field and the crop,” she said, “and we send that sample off to the South Dakota Soybean Processors in Volga and they determine the estimated process value from the oil and protein content of your soybeans and that’s how we evaluate the quality of the soybeans.”
Classes are divided into maturity groups, tillage methods and whether irrigation is used. The entry fee is $25, except for the youth division, which is free. There is also a special entry incentive for FFA members.
“We will be donating $250 to any FFA chapter that has at least one chapter member participating in the yield contest,” said Ringkob. “They can enter in the youth class and that will be free for them to enter.”
The entry deadline is August 31st at SDSoybean.org or by calling the South Dakota Soybean office to get an entry form in the mail.