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Farmer hopes to use knowledge gained in yield contest to improve profitability
A southern Indiana farmer is hoping to use the knowledge gained in participation of the national corn yield contest to improve profitability on his family’s farm.
Ben Kron entered Kron Farms into the National Corn Growers Association Corn Yield Contest, and in 2020 he was the winner in the strip, minimum, mulch, ridge-till irrigated class.
“There’s a lot of different applications that we made, and through that we were able to figure out what paid off and what we were doing just because it was a high-yield contest,” he says. “There were a lot of different things and applications and timing of applications we were able to tweak and change and it made us more efficient in what we’re doing.”
He farms with his parents, Randy and Joyce in Evansville.
Randy says he was skeptical about participating in the contest because “where he planted the crop for this contest, it’s pure sand and some of the poorest ground we have. But, he did prove that if you give it the right nutrients and do the things right, you can grow a lot of corn on that.”
Kron Farms was part of this year’s Purdue University Farm Management Tour. The farm started in 1983 and is located in Vanderburgh County.
Randy and Joyce are first-generation farmers. Ben, a partner in the operation, returned to the farm in 2012. Randy is the president of Indiana Farm Bureau. Joyce, Ben, and long-time employee Steve Glazer handle the day-to-day operations.
The family raises yellow corn and soybeans and is focusing on adopting new technology to increase productivity and reduce cost per bushel.
