This year's corn and soybean harvest figures to be a big one.

The USDA issued a forecast forecasts 2.218 billion bushels of corn from Illinois, up 5.6 percent from last year, and 542 million bushels of beans, up 17 percent from 2013.

The yield forecast is 188 bushels an acre for corn, up from 178 last year, and 54 bushels an acre for soybeans, up from 49 last year.

Gary Hudson, president of the Illinois Corn Growers Association and a farmer in Douglas County, credits the ingenuity of farmers. "They like to try new things, and you can see that with some of the nutrient work that we're doing, trying to figure more ways to keep the nutrients on the land as opposed to sending it down the river – just all kinds of different innovative ideas that come from farming," he said today (Tuesday) at Agriculture Day the State Fair.

He says he expects the price for corn to hold steady for a while, then to fall in September. September corn settled at $3.58½ today on the Chicago Board of Trade, up 1¾ cents. Soybeans are $10.94¼ per bushel, down 14¼ cents.

Nationally, the United States will produce 14 billion bushels of corn, up 1 percent from last year, and 3.8 billion bushels of beans, up 16 percent from last year. If these projections actually occur, they will be record harvests. {IRN)

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