South Dakota corn producers saw another record-breaking year in 2016. Officials say a combination of timely weather and planning led to the success.
South Dakota produced over 825 million bushels of corn in 2016 according to a US Department of Agriculture report. This is up 3% from last year’s production. It’s the second year in a row South Dakota has broken production and yield-per-acre records for multiple crops.
South Dakota soybeans reached over 255 million bushels for the year. This is a 9% increase from 2015 paired with a record 49 bushel per acre.
Keith Alverson is the president of the South Dakota Corn Growers Association. He says all producers can do is work with the circumstances they get.
“It’s kind of a testament to all the planning and work those farmers put in throughout the year. We heavily dependent on the weather of course but we try to control what we can control and so we put things in place and we have either the correct seeds or the fertility times of applications and planting correctly and then a lot of its left up to mother nature. If we can catch the rain at the right time and so I think it speaks pretty high of the South Dakota corn farmers about doing those things that they can control,” says Alverson.
Alverson says the high production is good for South Dakota’s rural communities and the state as a whole. Multiple neighboring states also saw record crop production in 2016.