Jay C. Young, superintendent of the Throckmorton Purdue Agricultural Center, wades through a soybean field Monday. Young says he is 6-feet-1 to show the height of the plants. / Brent Drinkut/Journal & Courier
Local farmers who were hoping to simply rebound from last year’s drought at the start of the planting season now are in a position to slam dunk.
According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Monday, farmers are poised to harvest the nation’s largest corn crop in history and the third largest soybean crop — a far cry from the disappointing yields produced by last year’s drought-ravaged fields.
The drought reduced last year’s corn harvest to its lowest level since 10 million bushels in 2003, and the average bushels per acre were the lowest since 113.5 in 1995.
In Indiana, the USDA expects corn farmers to produce about 979.4 million bushels, compared with 596.9 million bushels in 2012. That’s just short of a record 980 million bushels in 2007.
“To say what a difference a year makes is a huge understatement,” said Jay Akridge, Glenn W. Sample Dean of Purdue University Agriculture. “It’s good to have a crop to talk about this year.”
In its annual August crop production report, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service projected a national corn crop of 13.8 billion bushels and average yield of 154.4 bushels per acre, a 28 percent increase compared to last year’s 10.7 billion bushels. The previous record was 13.09 billion in 2009.
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