The Great Ontario Yield Tour pegs the average yield at 53.2 bushels per acre
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Ontario soybean producers could be on their way to a record crop.
Growers are projected to produce an average soybean yield of 53.2 bushels per acre, said Greg Stewart, agronomy lead with Maizex Seeds.
Stewart made the announcement during part of the 2020 Great Ontario Yield Tour’s virtual wrap-up event on Sept. 2.
“If we can get to 53.2 (bu/ac), that would be a record bean yield across the province relative to where we’ve been over the last few years,” Stewart said.
For context, the yield tour projected an average soybean yield of 50.2 bu/ac in 2018. Agricorp announced a final yield of 53 bu/ac that year.
If the 2020 projections hold, this year’s average yield would be the highest since the tour started in 2016.
In addition, Ontario soybean growers could produce more than 150 million bushels of soybeans.
Southwestern Ontario had a regional yield of 57 bu/ac, which is the highest in the province. Central Ontario’s average yield of 47 bu/ac is the lowest in Ontario.
On a county level, Ottawa-Carleton had the highest average yield at 66 bushels per acre.
In total, Stewart and Moe Agostino, chief commodity strategist with Farms.com Risk Management, toured about 350 soybean fields in the province.
Average population was 142,048 plants per acre and each plant averaged about 35 pods.