Should We Have Been Surprised by the U.S. Average Yield of Corn in 2023?

The USDA released its “final” estimate of the U.S. average yield of corn for 2023 in the January Crop Production Annual Summary report. The estimate was 177.3 bushels per acre, 2.4 bushels higher than the November estimate. This “final” estimate may be revised at the end of the 2023/24 marketing year, but these revisions are usually quite small. The final U.S. average yield for corn for 2023 of 177.3 bushels was a new record, but it was only 3.4 bushels above the average for the previous seven years. From a purely historical perspective, the 2023 corn yield was not an outlier. However, many observers were quite surprised by the new record corn yield given weather conditions for the 2023 growing season (e.g., Hirtzer, 2023; farmdoc daily, March 19, 2024). Significant areas of the Corn Belt were classified as being in severe or extreme drought during parts of the growing season, especially during the first half of the season (see U.S. Drought: Weekly Report for June 27, 2023 for an example). Other observers argued that a shift to more favorable weather conditions in July and August was responsible for what seems like a surprisingly high U.S. average corn yield (CropProphet, 2024). The purpose of this article is to use a crop weather model of the U.S. average yield of corn to determine whether the 2023 yield was truly surprising given growing conditions. The crop weather model is an updated version of the one used in this earlier farmdoc daily article (October 9, 2023).