Iowa’s on track to hold onto its ranking as the nation’s leading corn-producing state. The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects Iowa to harvest just over two billion bushels of corn, or around a fifth of the corn in the country according to the latest estimates.
We’re also likely to be number-one in soybean production. Even with a drought in parts of the western plains, the USDA’s estimate is for 2006 to have the nation’s third largest corn harvest ever.
Soybeans are priced at five to six dollars a bushel right now and the report says we’ll bring in over 450-million bushels of beans this fall. The estimate for the corn crop, at anywhere from 2-15 to two-55 a bushel, is for an Iowa harvest of two-point-one-four billion bushels of corn.