Ray Mueller
Correspondent
MADISON
Based on crop conditions and field surveys current through late September, the Wisconsin field office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service indicated that the state’s average yield for corn grain could hit 144 bushels, up by seven bushels from the forecast a month earlier.
The prospective increase was attributed to the dry and warm weather which persisted until the latter days of September. Since then, however, drying conditions have not been good and temperatures were well below average throughout October, putting the optimistic outlook somewhat in doubt.
If the late September forecast pans out, however, Wisconsin’s corn growers would harvest grain from 2.9 million acres – up by 50,000 from the Sept. 1 forecast – and the state’s total production would be 417.6 million bushels. This would be a 5.8 percent increase from 2008 and would give the state its third biggest corn crop ever and second highest average yield.
The early October report put the predicted national corn grain harvest at 13.03 billion bushels from a record average yield of 164.2 bushels per acre – an increase of 2.3 bushels per acre from the Sept. 1 forecast and 10.3 bushels more than the average yield in 2008. The national yield would be second to the record crop harvested in 2007.
Soybean prediction for Wisconsin is that 1.63 million acres have been or will be harvested with an average yield of 39.6 bushels per acre. This would give the state a total crop of 63.57 million bushels – up by 14 percent from 2008 and the fourth biggest soybean crop on record.
A national soybean crop of 3.25 billion bushels was forecast. This is based on a predicted average yield of 42.4 bushels per acre.
The October report also noted that Wisconsin’s farmers harvested 4.185 million tons (up by 3 percent) of alfalfa for dry hay. Other types of hay with a total yield of 722,000 tons were harvested from 380,000 acres in the state. The national harvest of alfalfa for dry hay was 72 million tons on an average yield of 3.43 tons per acre compared to Wisconsin’s average this year of 2.7 tons.
