NC Grower Sees Biggest Soybean Yields Ever

Kenneth Bartlett farms wheat, soybeans, and corn in Wayne, Duplin, & Lenoir Counties, in North Carolina. Bartlett says he’s just completed harvesting some of the best soybeans he’s ever grown. All of Bartlett’s soybean crop was double-cropped behind wheat:

“We tried to plant mostly short season soy beans.”
 

With this year’s advanced pace growing season, like many farmers, Bartlett tried something a little different late in the season:
 

“We had 80 acres that were double cropped behind corn. They have not been harvested yet but look really good.”
 

Producers were cautioned that Kudzu bugs could be a major threat to soybeans in the Carolinas this year, but Bartlett says they weren’t an issue for him:
 

“I didn’t see any in our fields. We had a neighbor who had some last year, but I didn’t see them this year.”
 

Bartlett explains that he had some fields that yielded quite high, pushing up his on-farm average:
 

“We had some high yields of 60 bushels but we will average in the upper 30s around 38.”
 

Bartlett sums up his soybean crop this way:
 

“We needed more acres with the price where it was and the yield that we had. We had some 60 bushel acres for the first time ever.”
 

After four years of struggling with drought, Bartlett is grateful for the year he’s had:

“I was thankful to have as much rain as we had to have produced this crop. We didn’t make a single crop last year, wheat, corn or beans. It was the fourth year in a row we had a drought. Last year was the first year we did not make something on one of the three crops.”
 

Kenneth Bartlett, North Carolina soybean, corn and wheat farmer. For more of our harvest series, including yield contest rules and deadlines, click here