Corn production expected to increase this season

JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri corn farmers are anticipating a bumper crop this year. This season, farmers planted 2.8 million acres of corn, with a yield of 146 bushels per acre at the beginning of August. If weather is favorable, corn production is expected to reach 380 million bushels in 2008, making this one of the top five corn crops in Missouri’s history, according to a release from Missouri Corn Growers Association.

Missouri farmers are poised to harvest the fourth largest corn crop on record. The 2008 yield is 14 bushels above the 5-year average.

“These numbers again prove the unrelenting production capacity of Missouri growers to meet the needs of feed, food and fuel,” said Mike Geske, Missouri Corn Growers Association president and farmer from Matthews, Mo. “Despite the wet spring, destructive floods and hostile critiques, corn growers have remained focused on doing what we do best.”

In the Central Missouri district that includes Boone County, corn farmers are expected to get a yield of 149 bushels per acre at the end of the 2008 season, up from 143 bushels per acre in 2007, a spokesman for Missouri Agricultural Statistics in Columbia said.