GUELPH — Eastern Ontario farmers were grinning from ear-to-ear as numbers flashed across yield monitors this fall, with average corn yields in the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry closing in on 200 bushels per acre.
Corn averaged 193.6 bu/acre in Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry, according to yields reported to Agricorp as of Dec. 17. Eastern Ontario averaged 177.9 bu/ac. OMAFRA has yet to make the official call but it looks like this year’s bin buster will easily beat the previous yield record of 162.7 bu/ac for Eastern Ontario set in 2010.
This year’s big yields — a potential provincial average of 170.6 bu/ac — and a 9.7 per cent increase in corn acreage pushed Ontario corn production 16.3 per cent higher than 2014 to 8.8 million tonnes, according to the Statistics Canada field crop production report released early last month.
But it’s still no match for the nine million tonnes harvested in 2013 in Ontario, which has averaged two-thirds of the total grain corn production in Canada for the last five years, said Statistics Canada. While Eastern Ontario hauled in more corn in 2013 due to planting more acres, farms that year yielded on average 152.5 bu/ac.
Eastern Ontario corn yields
Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry 193.6 bu/ac
Prescott-Russell 191.5 bu/ac
Ottawa 186.9 bu/ac
Lanark 181.4 bu/ac
Leeds-Grenville 159.6 bu/ac
Renfrew 156.9 bu/ac
Lennox & Addington 150.0 bu/ac
Frontenac 146.9 bu/ac
Source: Agricorp
