Corn Yield Trends
One of the greatest stories in the history of agriculture is the increase in corn yields over the last several decades. While weather ultimately influences yields for a given year, the underlying trend across the country is that more bushels of corn can be expected each year.
These great scientific increases generally work to increase the productivity of farmland and are an important factor in determining the rate of return that investors will earn on farmland investments. While you often hear about the national trend yield when it comes time to estimate the size of the expected corn crop, we decided that it might be interesting to examine how yield trends varied across counties in three different states: Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa from 1950 to 2012.