Local Rexburg farmer Terry Wilcox brought home the 2018 Wheat Yield Award. Wilcox’s yield was one of the biggest in the country. The National Wheat Foundation holds this competition every year, and Wilcox is the winner of an all-expenses paid trip to Orlando, Florida, to attend the 2019 Commodity Classic, courtesy of the National Wheat Foundation and WestBred® Wheat.
Wilcox broke down what they do to enter the competition and the process of the wheat they send.
“All we do is pick a place in one of our fields that we think is the best you have to have about five acres to put into the test or trial, whatever you want to call it, and so before harvest we’ll pick a good place and we’ll cut that place and then we’ll measure it,” he said.
Wilcox uses a WestBred variety that he gives the credit to his award-winning yield. Wilcox has won three years in a row here in Idaho and has taken second nationally in both 2016 and 2017.
“Well obviously the whole field or the whole farm doesn’t yield as well what you do on the trial because you’re looking for a good place to do it in,” Wilcox said. “We use the best practices we know how on all of our acres. The variety that we plant is a big player, we have to be able to count on the variety performing for us. We have liked WestBred variety.”
The National Wheat Yield Contest recognizes the top five growers in the different sectors of irrigated wheat in the different seasons. First-place state winners within each season or sector are entered for a chance to win the national award.