Wednesday, March 22, 2023

If your county's in the Corn Belt, it's probably in the Soybean Belt, based on USDA's latest county crop yield data

For a century or more we have heard about "the Corn Belt," but not even Wikipedia lists a "Soybean Belt." Nevertheless, the latest crop-yield maps make clear that there's a big overlap. Yields for corn and soybeans are above the national average in a swath from southern Minnestota to western Ohio, with scattered counties in Kentucky and other states. The county figures were released recently by the National Agricultural Statistics Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, and they worked with the agricultural-communications folks at the University of Illinois to produce these maps (click on them to enlarge):

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