URBANA, Ill. — Yields in Iowa are off, but not as bad as you might think given the drought and the derecho. Todd Gleason has more…
Iowa State Extension agricultural economist Chad Hart says a lot of the better than expected yield has to do with the very early start to the growing season.
Hart: For some of our producers, they were zeroed-out. There was a fair amount of damage. Especially in the central part of the state. This is where things overlapped between the drought and the derecho. But for the areas that just suffered one of those, what I am finding is, as we get the harvest numbers in, we are finding that we are salvaging a little bit more crop than they were expecting. That yields are little bit higher. I think this goes back to before the drought and the derecho took hold. We had a good planting season. We had plenty of early-season moisture to work with and that got the crop off to a good start. It helped it when we came to a rather abrupt finish so that we are able to get a little more yield out of these fields than you would have thought just looking at them.
USDA, in September, pegged the state-wide Iowa corn yield at 191 bushels to the acre. That’s down eleven bushels from the 202-bushel projection USDA made in August. The derecho had a lot to do with the decrease and the agency is still working to get a better handle on just how much of a yield problem the big wind created. However, if you think of the Iowa corn yield in terms of trend line says ILLINOIS Extension’s Gary Schnitkey, it is not off by nearly so much.
Schnitkey: As we look at it, Iowa is going to have a below-trend corn yield of four bushels. If you look at history you would have expected a four bushel higher corn yield on average for Iowa given the history.
Iowa’s trend line corn yield is 195. Schnitkey detailed the Iowa corn yield, along with soybeans for the whole of the nation in an article penned this week for the farmdoc Daily website. You may read it online now at farmdoc Daily dot Illinois dot E-D-U.
— Chad Hart, Iowa State Extension Agricultural Economist
Gary Schnitkey, ILLINOIS Extension Agricultural Economist
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