Sharing much the same weather, Ontario producers will be interested to know their Michigan counterparts are staring down the barrel of one of their worst cropping seasons in recent memory.
Delayed spring planting, lagging crop development and generally uneven growing conditions have resulted in highly variable crops that have farmers in the state “bracing for a potentially rough harvest,” Marlo Johnson, Director, USDA NASS, Great Lakes Regional Office, said in a release last week.
Based on conditions as of Oct. 1, the 2019 Michigan soybean crop is forecast at 75.68 million bu, down 31% from a year earlier and potentially the smallest since 2008. Although most of the year-over-year expected decline in state soybean output is due to a 25.5% drop in harvested area to 1.72 million acres, this year’s average yield is also expected to fall 3.5 bu/acre or 7.4% to 44 bu/acre.
At 269.7 million bu, Michigan corn production is forecast to fall over 9% from 2018 and could be the smallest crop since 2004. This year’s average expected yield of 155 bu/acre is actually up 2 bu from last year, but difficult spring seeding conditions meant just over 2 million acres of corn actually got seeded, down almost 11%. Corn for grain harvested acres are projected down 10.3% to 1.74 million.
This year’s Michigan dry bean crop is estimated at 3.92 million cwt, a drop of 15.3% from last year as harvested area is expected down 6% to 187,000 acres and the average yield is seen down 300 lbs/acre to 2,100 lbs.
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