Charles City, Va., strip-tiller David Hula won his 14th NCGA Yield Contest national title with a 572-bushel yield in the Strip-Till Irrigated category. Another one of his plots logged 536 bushels. Hula’s son, Craig, was second with a 538-bushel yield. Ben Jackson of Wrighstville, Ga., rounded out the top 3 in the category with a 382-bushel yield. 

“There’s no silver bullet to our success,” Hula told Strip-Till Farmer recently. “The difference is I’ve failed way more times than most have. I try a bunch of stuff — that’s the only way to know what works and what doesn’t.”

The third-generation farmer came up just short of his record-breaking 623-bushel yield that was set in 2024. His fertility program that year began by banding nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), zinc and a phosphate uptake enhancer with his ETS SoilWarrior. Hula then applied a starter fertilizer mix with his planter that included deep placement of N, P, zinc, boron, sulfur, nutrient enhancers and biologicals.

The Kalb family of Dubois, Ind., took home the hardware in the Strip-Till Non-Irrigated (Corn Belt States) competition. Kogen Kalb came out on top with just over 389 bushels per acre. Emersen Kalb was second with 379 bushels per acre and Randy Hardy of Roanoke, Ind., rounded out the top 3 in the category with 348 bushels per acre. It was a clean sweep for the Hoosier State.  

Jabe Watson of Sweetwater, Tenn., was 1st with a 349-bushel yield outside the Corn Belt in the Strip-Till Non-Irrigated competition. Daniel Gause III of Scranton, S.C., was a close second with 348 bushels per acre and Jeffrey Barlieb of Stewartsville, N.J. was third with 346 bushels.

"The Yield Contest is really about finding out what this crop is capable of,” says Ohio grower and NCGA President Jed Bower. “And as corn farmers, we get to show what we’re made of, too. It challenges participants to find innovative ways to succeed and contribute to decades of agronomic data that prove that American farmers are great at what we do.”

The 30 national and 567 state winners will be honored by NCGA at Commodity Classic in San Antonio, Texas, February 25 – 27, 2026.  

A complete list of the 2025 national and state Yield Contest winners can be found at ncga.com/YieldContest.