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Iowa remains tops in corn, soybean production Tuesday, January 17, 2006
DES MOINES (AP) -- Iowa remained on top in crop production last year, growing more corn and soybeans than any other state, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics released this week.
Just over 2.2 billion bushels of corn were harvested in Iowa last year, down 3.6 percent from 2004. The soybean harvest totaled about 533 million bushels, 7 percent more than the previous year, according to the USDA's annual crop production report.
Corn yielded about 173 bushels per acre across the state, 8 bushels per acre less than in 2004. The soybean yield of 53 bushels per acre was a record high.
The number of acres of corn planted grew from 12.7 million in 2004 to 12.8 million last year, while the number of soybean acres planted dropped from 10.2 million in 2004 to 10.1 million last year.
Farmers, especially those in the east-central and southeastern parts of Iowa, battled drought conditions.
"Here in Iowa, there were a lot of nervous days during the summer due to hotter weather than in earlier years," said Robert Wisner, a grain marketing economist with Iowa State University Extension.
Wisner said there was one bonus to the hot, dry weather: It seemed to keep soybean diseases away. The late summer rain was ideal for pod-filling, he said.
"The results were record soybean yields," he said.
Farmers dodged a potential problem posed by the late-season precipitation. Many were able to leave their corn in the fields long enough to let it dry without having to pay high fuel costs to artificially dry the crops, Wisner said.
Iowa farmers produced about 19 percent of the corn and about 17 percent of the soybeans grown in the United States last year, according to the USDA report released Thursday.
Nationwide, the 11.1 billion-bushel corn crop and the 3.09 billion bushels of soybeans were about 1 percent more than the USDA estimates released at the completion of harvest in November, according to the report. |
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