Now For the Corn Story
We continue our review of PLC yields and production
In yesterday’s post we ran the numbers on wheat PLC yields and production and in today’s post we do the same for corn.
List 1: Top 10 counties by corn base acres
Illinois owns this list — six of the ten counties are Illinois (Iroquois, McLean, LaSalle, Livingston, Bureau, and Henry), with South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska filling the rest. Brown County, South Dakota edges Iroquois for the top spot at 372,182 base acres. And note the scale: total U.S. corn base runs about 92.6 million acres, half again as much as wheat’s 60.2 million.
List 2: Top 10 counties by Total Corn PLC Yield
Seven of the ten are now Illinois counties. Watch the same productivity shuffle we saw with wheat: Brown County, South Dakota had the most base acres in the country but slides to sixth here, because its corn PLC yield of 144.4 bushels is the lowest of this group. McLean, Illinois climbs from third on base acres to first on total program bushels — 361,712 base acres at a 171.8-bushel PLC yield works out to 62.1 million program bushels, the most of any corn county in the nation. York, Nebraska is the yield standout of the heavyweights at 178.7 bushels, which is what carries it into the top four despite a smaller base.
List 3: Top 10 counties by corn PLC yield per acre
Two things jump out. First, these are silly-high yields — Snohomish County, Washington tops the chart at 315.2 bushels per acre, nearly double what the Illinois volume kings post on their program yields. But look at the base-acre column on the right: most of these are tiny irrigated or specialty pockets. Snohomish does it on 2,128 acres; King County does it on 133.
My home county of Walla Walla makes the list but only on about 3,000 acres, but I have a feeling that with the base acre update, those acres may jump a fair bit since there has been an increase of corn acres in that county.
In tomorrow’s post, we will run the soybean numbers.