Putting Alex Ovechkin’s record-breaking goal into ag context

Apr 07, 2025
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

U.S. ag exports have increased 232 percent between Wayne Gretzky’s retirement and 2024

Alex Ovechkin’s goal against the New York Islanders with 12:34 left in the second period on April 6 is a moment many hockey and sports fans didn’t think would happen.

That goal gave Ovechkin 895 for his career and put him alone atop the NHL’s all-time goals scoring list.

He passed Wayne Gretzky, who held the record of 894 career goals for 31 years following his April 1999 retirement.

With that at top of mind, Farms.com is going back to around the time of Gretzky’s retirement, to give an idea of how far ag production has come.

For starters, the site this article is posted on was in its early years.

Farms.com launched in January 1995, soon after it was possible to view images online!

And the person writing this article was approaching his 13^th birthday in July 1999.

Stat	1999	2024	Percentage Change
Average U.S. corn yield	133.8 bushels per acre 9.84 billion total bushels	179.3 bushels per acre 14.9 billion total bushels	51 percent increase in total corn production
Average U.S. soybean yield	38.6 bushels per acre 2.76 billion total bushels	50.7 bushels per acre 4.37 billion total bushels	58 percent increase in total soybean production
U.S. ag exports	$53 billion across 130 countries	$176 billion to 189 countries	232 percent increase
U.S. farmland acres	948 million	876 million	7.6 percent decrease
Average Canadian canola yield	28.2 bushels per acre 8.8 million total tonnes	36 bushels per acre 17.8 million total tonnes	27 percent increase in average yield
Average Canadian durum production	36 bushels per acre 4.3 million total tonnes	32.8 bushels per acre 5.9 million total tonnes	9 percent decrease in average yield
Canadian ag exports	$21.7 billion	$99.1 billion	356 percent increase
Canadian farmland acres	168 million	153.7 million	8.5 percent decrease

Here’s what else happened in ag in 1999:

Novariant launched the first commercially available auto steering system for farm equipment
Case and New Holland merged to form CNH Global N.V.
Dickson Despommier, a professor at Columbia University, proposes the idea of vertical farming.
USDA scientists discovered milkweed seedmeal can control nematodes and fall armyworms.
The first automatic milking system in North America is installed on a farm in Ontario.
The Fendt Favorit 700 Vario wins the Tractor of the Year award.
Agriculture Canada released a document to help farmers understand the Y2K challenge.

Learn about Novariant's technology in ag around 2:20 of the video.

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.