Statewide Corn Production and County-Level Yield Variation in South Dakota

Mar 10, 2026

By Hoanh Le and Matthew Elliott

Corn is one of the major crops in South Dakota, accounting for more than 50 percent of total crop cash receipts in 2024. According to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), the state planted 5.9 million acres of corn in 2024, producing approximately 884 million bushels. In 2025, planted acreage expanded to 6.85 million acres, and total production rose to about 1.09 billion bushels. This substantial increase was driven not only by acreage expansion but also by record-high yields—the highest in South Dakota’s history.

Figures 1-A and 1-B illustrate the trends in corn planted acreage (1-A) and total corn grain production (1-B) in South Dakota over the past decade. In 2019, South Dakota’s corn-planted acres were approximately 4.35 million, the lowest level during this period. Excessive rainfall and flooding in early spring 2019 delayed planting and resulted in the highest prevented plant acres in that year, significantly reducing corn planted acres. In contrast, 2025 is the highest corn-planted acres in the past decade, reflecting a stronger market signal for corn relative to soybeans.

2024 Corn Yield Across Counties

The statewide average yield reached a historic high of 171 bushels per acre in 2025, up 4.3 percent from 164 bushels per acre in 2024. However, average yields vary substantially across counties due to differences in soil quality, weather patterns, and management practices. Because county-level yield data for 2025 have not yet been released, we will examine the 2024 corn yields at the county level. Figure 2 presents the average yield for non-irrigated cropland using data from the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA). Unlike survey-based yields from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), which do not report yields for many South Dakota counties due to small numbers of sample farms or low response rates in those counties, county yields from RMA are from an aggregate of individual yields from participants in crop insurance programs within a county. Li et al. (2020) find that county yields from RMA are slightly higher than NASS estimates, but they are not statistically significantly different most of the time. In 2024, Moody had the highest yield in South Dakota at 203 bushels per acre, while Jackson had the lowest at 36.9 bushels per acre.

Source : sdstate.edu

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.