Farmers are seeing some of their investments pay off big time as a new study is suggesting they're getting a huge return on what they're paying for wheat varieties.

As part of their grain levy, farmers pay into funds that go towards public research of wheat varieties which attempt to increase yield along with pest and disease resistance.

In the last study of data that concerns how much farmers are getting back from the program in 2012, it was determined that there was a return of $20 for every $1 sent to the levy.

Jake Leguee, the vice-chair of the board of directors for Sask Wheat, one of the organizations that helped with the study, said their recent analysis shows farmers are doing even better.

"They were actually able to determine that the return investment was even better this time. It's actually a  33 to 1 rate of return. Another way to think about that might be if you took a dollar and put it into a savings account, you'd be getting a 33% rate of return on that investment. If that's what I could get in my savings account I'd be putting every dollar I could into it." 

Much of that return is coming from a 10-14% increase in yields seen since the previous study in 2012.

Leguee says he's hoping the increase in return for farmers will get them excited to see that their investments over the years have paid off.

"That's a really substantial and impressive number that I think should show producers that they should be excited about the opportunity here, to invest in better varieties."

The 33 to 1 return rate is also a conservative estimate, as various other benefits of the new wheat varieties weren't a part of that calculation.

"Basically, this study that's coming up with a 33 to 1 rate of return is looking just to yields," said Leguee, "It's ignoring improved disease controls of our new varieties, it's ignoring the prevalence of midge tolerant wheat that's available to us now and a lot of factors like semi-dwarf varieties and those sorts of things. The real number is probably even higher than that."