Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture, projected a record corn (maize) crop of 16.7bn bushels. That’s an increase of 13% on 2024.

The increase in yield is based on a record average corn yield forecast of 188.8bu/ac, up 9.5bu/ac from last year.

The maize area is also up 2m acres this year, contributing to the production estimate increase.

ADVERTISEMENT

This week the Irish Farmers Journal is taking part in the Pro Farmer Crop Tour in the US, sampling and measuring corn (maize) across the US Midwest.

When there is a lot of corn in the world, grain prices often fall and Irish barley and wheat prices are competing with world prices so keeping an eye on production around the world is important.

The first of the crop tour results came out on Monday night in a live broadcast. After examining hundreds of crops in the fields all day the tour put South Dakota’s corn yield up 11.3% and Ohio’s corn yield up 1.31%.

In Nebraska, maize cobs were starting to fall and might be harvested in a month or so. Nebraska and Indiana’s yields were also up on last year. States still to be sampled are Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota.

In the fields there has been more rain this year than usual, which is helping yields.

When we visited Nebraska we saw large amounts of rust on maize crops, along with hail damage and many crops in Nebraska were broken due to wind.

Soybeans

In the soybean fields there are a lot of dead plants in crops and some of the scouts think that beans may not reach their potential.

One long-term scout, Karen Braun from Zaner Ag Hedge reported that pod counts on soybeans in Nebraska were down 23% from last year, while other scouts said pod counts were up. Pod counts were reported up in South Dakota and Ohio.