The Allendale brokerage firm has released yield results collected from a recent survey of farmers. Rich Nelson of Allendale said they’ve done this survey for a long time.

“As far as the accuracy here goes, over on the corn side, in the past fifteen years, we’ve generally been within about two bushels. I want to say about 11 of those past fifteen years we’ve been within two bushels of the USDA’s September yield number. Data for the four years range from 2.3 to 4.6 bushels off per acre. Numbers on the soybeans in terms of the past fifteen years, we’ve been within 1.5 bushels an acre of the USDA’s number for ten of those years. 

Nelson talked about this year’s survey results.

“USDA gave the trade a bit of a surprise here with their August numbers. They put yields at 188.8 around the U.S. for corn, and they suggested a 53.6 number here for soybeans, and the corn number was the bigger surprise of those two. Our survey actually suggested we may not see that much of a break on this coming report. For corn, 187.5, and for soybeans, 53.3, for nationwide numbers.”

Several states in the Midwest had higher numbers than USDA predicted, and Nelson said that matches up with August rainfall patterns.

“The Eastern Corn Belt did see very light declines in yield, as well as in Missouri, due to that dryness situation. But keep in mind, for most of the West, they did have some good rainfall overall, and so we did see those numbers likely boosted. Yes, a net decline in yield was minimal but overall lower in the East and a little higher in the West.”