Fundamentally Speaking

Very Dry Last Half of Growing Season Took Top End Off US Corn, Soybean Yields

Joel Karlin
By  Joel Karlin , DTN Contributing Analyst
Chart by Joel Karlin, DTN Contributing Analyst

Last Friday's final crop production report was a real shocker as both 2024 U.S. corn and soybean yields pared sharply from what had been indicated in the November report as there is now no doubt that exceptionally dry finish to growing season in most of the key corn and soybean states really took a toll.

The USDA corn yield at 179.3 bushels per acre (bpa) was down 3.8 bpa from the November estimate and that is the third largest bpa decline between the November and January report since the November corn estimate was started in 1974, next to what was seen in 1993 and 2020, and the second largest drop in percent terms next to 2020.

As for soybeans, the USDA yield at 50.7 bpa was down 1.0 bpa from the November estimate and that is the third largest bpa decline between the November and January report since 1970, next to what was seen in 1972 and 2018, and the second largest percentage drop next to 2018 since 1982.

This chart shows the percent change in the 2024 corn and soybean yields for the top growing states and the U.S. from the September to the January report in percent on the left-hand axis.

We use the September USDA yield report figures since we wanted to take a longer-term perspective on the impact on yield if any from the dry latter half of the growing season and to track that, on the right-hand axis is the past year's August to October total precipitation as a percent of the 1895-2024 Aug-Oct average.

The figures in the yellow squares are the rank of total Aug-Oct precipitation from the period 1895-2024 with 1 the wettest and 130 the driest.

Starting off with those states that saw row crop yield improvements between the September and final report in January, for soybeans there was just one, which is NC, that had a 3 bpa or 8.3% increase, with AK and LA unchanged.

The other 15 top states saw yield declines led by WI down by 6 bpa or 11.1%, and KS down 10.3% or 4 bpa.

As for corn, MO with a 2 bpa or 1.1% increase and ND up 3 bpa or 2.1% were the only states to see yield increases with the other 16 showing declines led by TX off 9 bpa or 7.4% and IN down a sharp 12 bpa or 5.7%.

As noted above, it does appear that a dry last half of the growing season took the top end off yields as only CO and NC had above average August-October moisture.

Many states were quite dry including NE at 3.14 inches, less than half their usual 6.28, TX 48% below its average and IA 44% below its average Aug-Oct rainfall.

Note how many states, plus the total U.S., have a rank of 98 or lower, meaning their total Aug-Oct precipitation ranks in the lowest quartile of values going back to 1895.

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