Soybean yield predictions highly variable this year

By Connor Lynch
Combines started rumbling through soybean fields last month as harvest in Eastern Ontario got underway.

And predictions on how yields will shake out vary pretty wildly.
Statistics Canada was probably the most tepid with its yield predictions, anticipating corn yields of 159.6 bushels/acre on average in Ontario, and soybean yields of 46.1 bu/ac.

Great Lakes Grain, however, was quite optimistic by comparison. Focused mainly on Western Ontario but looking as far east as Peterborough and Northumberland, the co-op predicted corn yields of 186.9 bu/ac and soybean yields as high as 58.3 bu/ac.

“The soybean crop will be the crop we talk about the most when we look back on the 2020 season. The soybean crop makes its yield in the back half of the growing season. The weather in late July and August has helped to support what will most likely be a new provincial yield record,” the co-op wrote in a news release.

Perhaps most stunningly of all, the co-op was expecting most of that yield to come from Eastern Ontario. Their Eastern Ontario forecast was a corn yield average of 155.2 bu/ac, but a soybean yield of 61.2 bu/ac, a full five bushels higher than Western Ontario.

Farms.com, however, was a bit less optimistic. It was forecasting yields in Eastern Ontario of 169 bu/ac for corn and 44 bu/ac for soybeans. In East-Central Ontario it was calling for 163 bu/ac corn and 38 bu/ac soybeans.
Western Ontario was expected to harvest 170 bu/ac corn and 43 bu/ac soybeans. But the deep Southwest was forecast to get 179 bu/ac corn and 44 bu/a soybeans.