Kansas soybean farmer breaks record twice 

One Phillips County farmer broke the Kansas Soybean Yield Contest record by double digits. Twice. 

Josh McClain for the second year broke the Kansas Soybean Yield Contest by double digits, with his soybean crop going from 114.3 bushels per acre in 2023 to 144.5 in 2025. He tried a few different inputs and changed things up to achieve the impressive yields.  

“Shockingly, planting our beans with no seed treatment and going with the Meristem Hopper Throttle Max Stax made a very large difference,” he said. “We experimented with it last year and saw a huge difference in our dryland and our irrigated and so we went this year, (on the) whole farm.” 

The team members also tested several foliars and saw a great yield response from it. Through their experiments they’ve decided to change things up.  

“We concentrated on running a trial of timing of application of foliars, and we saw some better yield response on the timing of the applications,” he said. “And so, we’ll implement those two things and see if we can’t break it again next year.” 

McClain planted his soybeans at the beginning of May—not particularly early—and his growing season in 2025 was normal for his area, which included dry stretches and about 40% less rainfall. 

McClain interplants his soybeans into corn and started doing that because he’d hit a plateau on corn yields at 325 bushels per acre. 

“We couldn’t really push it. We’d get to a 327, but we couldn’t get much past that,” he said. “We looked at interplanting to increase our corn yields, which we did dramatically, but we didn’t realize, with the extra bonus of extremely increasing our soybean yields as well.” 

Located near the Lower Republican River in the Prairie Dog area, he’s limited on how much water he can pump, and he aims to conserve as much water as possible. 

He also uses irrigation technologies to make use of what water he does have available. 

“We use multiple moisture probes in each irrigated field, and we have an agronomist that checks all our fields once a week.” 

McClain interplants the corn and soybeans in 12-row intervals, and the corn consequently yields more because it can take advantage of sunlight.  

“A lot of people misinterpret that nitrogen is your biggest nutrient need for your plants, but it’s carbon through the sunlight,” he said. “Plants got to harvest sunlight.” 

One might think the soybeans would have to compete with the corn, but McClain thinks the interplanting does benefit the soybeans. By the corn plant shadowing the soybeans, it motivates them to grow harder. 

“Soybeans and corn are completely two different plants,” he said. “The corn plants—I kid that if you give them everything, they’re going to do the most that they possibly can, and soybean plants, the child that you got to motivate more to almost make them angry to do better.” 

When it comes to nitrogen, McClain does think the intercropping gives the advantage to the soybeans. The corn, in his experience, uses less. 

“Everybody claims that the nitrogen isn’t available until the next year, but for some reason, we’re raising a lot more bushels of corn than what we’re applying on nitrogen.” 

In their four-year rotation, McClain goes soybeans, intercrop, corn, and intercrop.  

“When you’re raising 450-bushel corn, you got to have the grain cart underneath most of the time, and so our outside rows always have to be soybeans,” he said. “I can’t just continuously flip flop and back around, because I wouldn’t be able to put corn on the outside, because I can’t get it through with a grain cart.” 

Because of that extra traffic, McClain pays special attention to soil compaction on his fields.  

“That’s our No. 1 limiting contribution for decreasing our yields,” he said. “All of our equipment is on tracks, and then we do an interseeding of a radish, turnips and clover cover crop mix into our standing crops that grow.” 

The cover crop is interseeded before the last watering on the irrigated acres, so it’s up and growing and getting a good start in the fall. 

Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].