It’s been a good year for soybean and corn production, while cotton is down almost 20 percent from a year ago.

According to a crop production release from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), soybean production, Newton County’s biggest crop, is forecast at a record 3.98 billion bushels. That is a 1 percent increase from a year ago.
The same USDA crop production report said corn is forecast at 13.7 billion bushels, and the yield is expected to average 169.3 bushels per acre.

If the crop yield is realized it will be the second highest yield and third largest production on record for the United States.
Nationally, cotton production is forecast at 13.3 million 480-pound bales, down 19 percent from 2014.

In Georgia corn for grain production is forecast at 50.7 million bushels, down 2 percent from October and down 4 percent from 2014. If realized, this will be a record high yield of 181 bushels per acre. Cotton production forecasted at 2,300,000 bales is unchanged from last month but down 11 percent from 2014. Forecasted peanut production remains at 3.43 billion pounds, up 41 percent from 2014. Soybean production remains forecasted at 14.1 million bushels, but up 21 percent from 2014. If realized, this will be a record high yield of 44 bushels per acre.

Those numbers have translated well for the farm gate value, which is the net value of the product when it leaves the farm, after market costs have been subtracted.

The farm gate value for Newton County was $23.5 million in 2014. The overall farm gate value for Georgia was $14.1 billion in 2014.