Missouri Corn Harvest Stays Above 500m Bushels
Despite the damp planting season and drought the rest of the way, Missouri farmers were still able to eke just over a half-billion bushels of corn into their combines this past harvest. USDA’s Annual Crop Production report, closing out the 2022 growing year, determined that Missouri harvested 502.3 million bushels of corn. While that’s down eight percent from last year and 10 percent below two years ago, yield was able to increase slightly in the past year at 161 bushels per acre. Harvested acreage declined again, down nine percent at 3.12 million acres. Silage acreage doubled in 2022 as drought conditions impacted pasturelands, with 150,000 acres of corn. Yield of just 11 bushels per acre resulted in 1.65 million bushels of corn turned to silage.
While Missouri’s haul was lower, more bins on the farm were brimming full of corn. The quarterly grain stocks report found that the state had eight percent more corn on hand at the start of December. On-farm stocks were up 30 million bushels at 260 million, while elevators, mills and exporters held onto 101.3 million bushels, down two percent.
Nationwide, corn for grain production was down nine percent at 13.7 billion bushels. Yield dropped from last year’s record, down 3.4 bushels at 173.3 bushels per acre. Corn stocks at the beginning of December totaled 10.8 billion bushels, down seven percent from a year ago. Both on-farm and off-farm storage were down by that margin, with on-farm stocks at 6.75 billion and off-farm stocks at 4.06 billion. Indicated disappearance during the fall totaled 4.3 billion bushels, down eight percent.