Nebraska corn yields estimated at 166 bushels

In its crop production report today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture lowered its estimate for Nebraska corn yields to 166 bushels per acre – that's 4 bushels below the October estimate of 170 but still the second-largest yield on record (tied with 2004).

With harvested acres remaining the same, that yield figure puts the state's corn crop at 1.48 billion bushels, off from last month's 1.58 billion estimate. It is still the second-largest corn crop on record.

Nationally, USDA pegged corn production at 12.5 billion bushels on a national average yield of 154.3 bushels per acre. That yield estimate is 1.5 bushels below last month, while total crop production is down from USDA's 13.1 billion bushel October estimate.

Yields were reduced across the Corn Belt, although a few states (MI, MN, NY, ND, WI and CA) are still projected to have record yields.

As for supply and demand, USDA lowered feed and residual use by 100 million bushels and corn exports by 50 million bushels. However, it increased corn use for ethanol by 100 million bushels, which it attributed to record October ethanol production indicated by Energy Information Administration data. It also said that – while small relative to domestic usage – higher ethanol exports and lower imports are expected to add to corn use for ethanol with high sugar prices limiting the availability of ethanol from Brazil.

In the end, all that math lowers 2010-11 corn ending stocks 75 million bushels to 827 million bushels. USDA said that figure – if realized – would be the lowest since 1995-96 and represent a carryout of 6.2 percent of projected usage. In 1995-96, carryout dropped to 5 percent of estimated usage.

In the chart below, the highlighted figures in the 2009-10 column are records.