Agriculture: Will the yield keep growing?

StarTribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
By MATT McKINNEY, Star Tribune
Last update: June 3, 2009 - 10:44 AM

Corn yields seem to rise every year, along with demand. But the question is whether, even with genetic tinkering, the yields will continue to increase.

As farmers put the state's 2009 corn crop into the ground this month, they expect to grow more corn per acre than last year. And if history is any guide, they will.

Farmers today harvest more corn than their parents did a generation ago from the same fields, a fact made evident in historical charts that show corn yield over the past several decades as a steadily rising line.

So reliable is corn's growth of about 2 extra bushels per acre per year that government analysts folded it into their forecasts for this year's 12.1 billion bushel crop. It's just expected.

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