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MDA director looks for big Missouri soybean yields

Missouri Director of Agriculture Richard Fordyce has yet to shell any corn on his northwest Missouri farm, but the USDA says that as of Sunday, the state’s harvest is 18 percent done.  Fordyce says most of that harvest is in Missouri’s southeast and southwest.

“I think yields down there are good, maybe not quite what they had anticipated,” Fordyce told Brownfield Ag News Tuesday.  “I was talking to farmers in northeast Missouri, in Ralls and Pike County, and those yields were 200, plus [bushels per acre].”

Although soybean harvest hasn’t begun in Missouri, Fordyce says there are hopeful signs of a good yielding crop.

“We actually hosted a Chinese soybean trade delegation at our farm on Friday and they wanted to go out into the field and look and I was very pleased with what it looks like out in the soybean field, at least in northwest Missouri,” said Fordyce.  “I think we’re going to have some really astonishing yields, hopefully, in soybeans.”

The USDA’s production estimate for Missouri’s soybean crop is nearly 270 million bushels, compared to 181 million in 2015.  Although the yield is higher this year, much of the difference between this year and last year is because so many acres were left unplanted a year ago.