Ontario’s 2024 corn and soybean crops were as good as many farmers thought they were.
Agricorp reports that the average yield for corn and soybeans for participants of production insurance were 10 per cent and eight per cent above the 10-year average.
Ontario corn yields averaged 204 bushels per acre, 10 per cent higher than the 10-year average of 186 bushels per acre.
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Soybeans averaged 53 bushels per acre, eight per cent higher than the 10-year average of 49 bushels per acre.
Excess rain resulted in some replanting or struggling corn crops in parts of the province. That showed up in lower yields through southern Middlesex, western Elgin and south-east Lambton counties in the southwest, and through Niagara, Haldimand and Halton.
There were other pockets of very high production, especially through the Ottawa Valley, Chatham-Kent, Essex, Waterloo and Oxford.
For soybeans, rains made Lambton County a lower-yield area than usual, with smaller trouble spots across the province including Prescott and Russell, York and parts of Halton, Grey and Niagara.
Agricorp says it paid out $75 million in production insurance claims by mid-January for the 2024 crop, mostly due to excessive rain.
The Agricorp numbers are higher than the Statistics Canada yield report in December, which said 2024 corn yields averaged 180 bushels per acre and 51.8 bushels per acre for soybeans in Ontario.
