Fundamentally Speaking

The USDA raised its projection for the 2024 U.S. corn yield earlier this month to an even higher record of 183.6 bushels per acre (bpa), up 0.5 bpa from its August projection.

The current high end of September crop rating, stellar actual yield reports being seen so far, and idea that big crops get bigger suggest the final yield given in the January annual production report will be even higher.

This chart shows the change in the USDA's national corn yield projection from the August to the September crop production report and then from the September to the final report in January in bpa for the period 2000-2024.

The aqua blue columns are years of yield increases from August to September while the figures in the yellow boxes are week 38 (third week of September) corn crop conditions.

These are calculated based on our usual ratings system where we weight the crop based on the percent in each category and assign that category a factor of 2 for very poor, 4 for poor, 6 for fair, 8 for good, and 10 for excellent and then sum the results.

Over the past 25 years (not including this year's result), USDA has increased the U.S. corn yield 12 times and seven times the final yield has been higher than the September estimate by an average of 4.9 bpa.

The four times the January yield has been lower than the September figure, which itself was higher than the August number, it has been so by an average of 4.0 bpa with a total average of up 1.6 bpa.

So, the odds suggest a final higher yield this season.

Note also the most recent crop rating was 728, the highest for this point in the season since 2018 and the second highest since 2016.

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