Georgia farmer Randy Dowdy took top honors in this year’s National Corn Growers Association 2016 Corn Yield Contest. Dowdy told Brownfield, “It’s not every day you get to announce you have 500-bushel corn.” He finished the year with 521 bushels per acre. Dowdy says farmers need to be students of the crop itself. “We have to control the controllable things,” he said, “and know what those things are. You have to walk the field and understand what stress is to a corn plant.” Once a farmer understands these things, Dowdy says the next thing is to figure out what to do to reduce stress on those plants. He says the key to better yield results starts with the plant stand, including, “how it emerges and how it comes out of the ground. It all has to come up at the same time.”