Fundamentally Speaking

USDA increased both the 2025 U.S. corn planted and harvested areas in this month's crop production report, although we are seeing the national harvested to planted ratio did fall slightly down to 91.16% vs 91.18% in the July WASDE.

This compares to the final 91.5% figure a year ago and 91.4% for the 2023 U.S. corn crop.

Not sure why USDA is using a lower harvested to planted ratio as often a high yielding crop such as the one seen this year is associated with a higher than normal harvested to planted ratio as less corn is cut for silage and more for grain, and little if any of the crop is plowed under due to poor conditions.

Along these lines, this chart shows the U.S. corn harvested to planted area ratio for the top 18 growing states and the U.S. with the 2000-2025 average along with the highest and the lowest planted ratio since 2000 along with the USDA's August 2025 estimate on the left-hand axis.

Reported on the right-hand axis is how the top 18 states and the U.S. harvested/planted ratio given in the August 2025 crop production report deviates from the 2000-2025 final harvested to planted ratio.

We were also curious about the relation between yields and the harvested planted ratio so the figure in the yellow boxes is the percent the USDA Aug 2025 corn yield estimate deviated from the 25-year trend for each of the states and the U.S.

As noted above, this year's harvested to planted ratio is 91.2% which is just above (0.1%) over the 25-year average of 91.1%.

This is actually the fourth lowest ratio since 2006 and although USDA indicated that this year's 188.8 bushels per acre (bpa) yield is 3.6% above trend, the highest in that regard since the 2016-2018 period the harvested to planted ratio those three years averaged 91.8% bpa.

The highest harvested to planted ratio is seen in IL at 98.2% which is not unusual as that state has the highest average ratio while PA has the lowest at 64% which again is not unusual as that state has the lowest average ratio, although this year's number is down 5.7% from the 25-year average, the most of any state.

ND, with a 92.8% ratio this year, has the highest positive percent deviation from the average at up 4.6%.

Note also that MI, PA and WI average ratios below 90% as a lot of their planted corn is harvested for silage instead of grain to feed their large dairy cow populations.

(c) Copyright 2025 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.