Fundamentally Speaking

For the third year in a row and fourth in the past five seasons, the U.S. has seen a record corn yield but in many respects the results from 2025 are better than seen in 2024, 2023 and 2021.

This chart shows the percent that the 2023, 2024, and 2025 corn yields from the top 18 states and the U.S. deviated from the rolling 25-year trend for that particular season.

This year's national corn yield at 186.5 bushels per acre (bpa) topped the prior record of 179.3 bpa last year by 7.2 bpa, the largest year on year increase in yield since the 171.0 bpa peak seen in 2014 that was 12.9 bpa above the final 2013 figure.

Note that the 2025 yield was 2.3% above the 25-year trend, the highest vs. trend since 2018, while the record U.S. 2024 and 2023 yields were actually below the 25-year trend.

As highlighted in the text box, while growing conditions were better in the Western Corn Belt than in the Eastern Corn Belt, the ECB states of IN and WI saw record high yields joining WCB states, MN, NE, ND and SD as six of the 18 top states saw all-time high yields vs four in 2024 and just two in 2023.

Finally, whereas in 2023 and 2024 when 11 of the 18 states saw below trend yields, this past season only KY, OH, PA and TN had below trend yields, again pointing to the better weather seen west of the Mississippi River.

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