Fundamentally Speaking

The 2025 U.S. corn crop was one for the record books as production was an all-time high of 17.021 billion bushels (bb), more than 2.128 bb (14.3%) above the 2024 total, the highest year-to-year jumps for both bushel output and percentage change since 2013's recovery from the horrific 2012 drought.

Much has been made of the record 2025 yield of 186.5 bushels per acre (bpa), the third yield record in a row and fourth in the past five seasons as this was 7.2 bpa (4.0%) above the prior year, the largest year-on-year gains for both measures since 2014.

Certainly, helping achieve this record production were big gains in both planted and harvested area.

U.S. farmers seeded 98.788 million acres to corn this season, the largest amount since 1936, which was 3.6% above the 95.326 million acres they had intended to plant back in March.

That is the greatest percent increase between the March prospective planting and final production figures since at least 2000.

Meanwhile the 2025 harvested area at 91.258 million acres is the highest since 1933, and was a whopping 5.2% above the USDA's first U.S. corn harvested area figure of 86.774 million acres given in the June acreage report.

This is also by far the largest increase for harvested area seen between the June report and the final production reports at least since 2000.

Finally, given this was a record yielding season, growing conditions were generally quite good as more corn was harvested for grain than abandoned or cut for silage.

Back in June, USDA pegged the 2025 corn harvested panted ratio at 91.1%, but the final figures given earlier this month pushed that to 92.3%, the highest U.S. corn harvested to planted ratio since 92.5% was seen in 2007.

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