Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler sits down each week with Southern Farm Network’s Rhonda Garrison to discuss “Today’s Topic.”
The USDA’s North Carolina crop report for August is out, and it paints a promising picture. Production of corn, peanuts, soybeans and flue-cured tobacco is up in North Carolina compared with last year. And the really good news is that yields per acre are higher than a year ago.
The corn yield is forecast at 114 bushels an acre, up 30 bushels from 2011. Total production is forecast at 88.9 million pounds, a 30 percent increase from last year, when drought and Hurricane Irene teamed up to severely hurt the harvest.
Another crop that is enjoying a good year is flue-cured tobacco. The yield is forecast to be 2,250 pounds an acre, which is 50 pounds more than the July estimate. Production is forecast to total 346.5 million pounds, a 40 percent increase over 2011 even though farmers planted fewer acres this year. The 2011 crop was devastated by Irene.
The peanut crop is also doing well, with yields estimated to be 3,700 pounds per acre, 100 pounds better than a year ago. Total production is forecast to grow by 32 percent.
Soybean yields will show modest gains this year. They are forecast to be 32 bushels per acre, up two from last year. But thanks to more acres being planted, soybean production is forecast to total 52.2 million bushels, which is 28 percent more than a year ago.
Cotton production is forecast to be down about 7 percent from a year ago, mainly because farmers are expecting to harvest 255,000 fewer acres than in 2011. But the cotton yield should improve significantly compared with last year. The 2012 forecast is 837 pounds per acre, an increase of 221 pounds from last year’s yield, which was hurt by Hurricane Irene and the damp weather that followed.
Click below to listen to the Commissioner and Rhonda discuss the crop report.
[Audio:http://info.ncagr.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Troxler_8-14.mp3 |titles=Today’s Topic for Aug. 14]
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