September's Crop Production Report

Here is National Agricultural Statistics Service's Mountain Director Bill Meyer with highlights from the September Crop Production report.

Meyer: "So this is the second of our corn forecasts for the season. So for Colorado our corn production forecast at 154 million bushels. This is unchanged from our August forecast, but is up 14 percent from our 134.9 million bushels of las year. Currently we are estimating corn yield in Colorado at 140 bushel per acre — that is 2 bushels below than last year's final yield. The corn in Colorado is rated pretty good, We have assessed at 65 percent good and 14 percent excellent. So that is a good crop. At the U.S. level, the corn production is forecast at 15.1 billion bushels. That is down a little — less than one percent — from our August forecast. The yield is anticipated to be at 174.4 bushels per acre, down .7 bushels from last month. If this crop is realized it will be the highest yielding production on record for the United States — a lot of corn."

Additionally the report says that Colorado's sorghum crop is down from last year — it is forecast at 15.6 million bushels, down 2 percent last month and down 29 percent from the 22 million bushels harvested last year. Sugar beet production is also down from last year — forecast at 952,000 tons, down 1 percent from a year ago.