JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (DTN) -- So far this season, yield trial results from the Farmers' Independent Research of Seed Technologies (FIRST) network seem to support anecdotal harvest reports that overall corn yields are lower than USDA estimates released last month. The difference could be enough to push the U.S. average corn yield below the record set in 2024, though perhaps not enough to stymie record production.

According to Matt Dahle, FIRST business manager, corn yields in their trials this year are trending lower than last season, while soybean yields are exceeding their 2024 results.

FIRST operates a network of nearly 300 yield trial locations across the country -- from the Red River Valley of North Dakota down to Missouri and Kentucky and from Ohio to Kansas. The organization evaluates thousands of commercial seed products each season with the intent of providing farmers with timely, unbiased data to inform seed-buying decisions and improve profitability.

As of Oct. 15, roughly half of those locations had been harvested, including about 80% of soybean plots and just around 50% of corn plots.

DISEASE DEPRESSES CORN YIELD TRIALS

"We've never finished a season with a yield higher than what we have as a network average on Oct. 15," Dahle said. "This year, the average corn yield across harvested FIRST trials on Oct. 15 was 232.8 bushels per acre (bpa). Last year, we were at 246.4 bpa at the same time."

By the time all trial locations were harvested last season, the FIRST average corn yield fell to 231 bpa, compared to the final USDA yield average of 179.3 bpa, which was a record.

Dahle noted that over the past six seasons, FIRST's final average corn yield has exceeded the USDA's final end-of-season average by 40 to 50 bushels. Should the pattern repeat this year, and FIRST's Oct. 15 corn average falls as in previous seasons, the USDA's estimated 186.7 bpa average from the September Crop Production and World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) reports could be well above actual harvest.

"Just looking at 2025 versus 2024, year over year, we're substantially behind as far as the average corn yield that we've seen in our plots," Dahle said, noting that late-season disease pressure was the primary driver cited by the program's managers for the reduction.

"Right now, our numbers align with USDA's end of year estimate. But we have half of our corn harvest yet to complete, and our numbers every single year support that our yield goes down from here. So, I would say our data points to the USDA number for corn being high -- I just don't know how high," Dahle said.

Should the FIRST average corn yield on Oct. 15 fall by the same 15.1 bpa that it did in 2024, the program average would be 217.7 bpa. Following the trend of being 40 to 50 bushels above USDA's final yield leads to a national average somewhere between 167.4 bpa and 177.4 bpa.

"On the surface level, a drop of yield like that would certainly make headlines," said Rhett Montgomery, DTN lead market analyst. "At the most extreme, 167.4 bpa would be well below trendline and the lowest U.S. corn yield since 2013. On the other end of the range, 177.4 bpa would also no longer be a U.S. record, but it would still be the second-largest U.S. corn yield behind 2024."

Montgomery noted that in last month's WASDE, USDA published the range of errors for the reliability of its September projections for corn production compared to the final yield estimate. He said the data implies that corn production could fall between 16.108 billion bushels (bb) and 17.520 bb.

"The historical accuracy of USDA would argue there is still a good chance the total USDA production is above 16 bb," Montgomery said. "However, stretching that to the 90% confidence would be a floor of 15.620 bb or 173.6 bpa yield assuming acreage doesn't change. That's firmly within the range to which the FIRST data points and historically speaking, would be the largest miss by USDA from September to final on production. This would certainly warrant a market reaction, and we'd likely see a rally in corn prices."

However, even a corn crop of 15.620 bb would still be a record, besting the previous mark of 15.341 bb harvested in 2023.

"It's a testament to just how high the estimate in the September WASDE of 16.814 bb was within historical context and just how far the yield would have to drop to really move the needle with 90 million harvested acres," Montgomery added.

STRONG SOYBEAN YIELDS

While yield trial results point to a smaller corn crop, a different story is emerging for yield averages in FIRST's soybean trials. They are trending higher than last year.

"We've seen some incredibly strong soybean yields for 2025, and our Oct. 15 average was 67.3 bpa," Dahle said. "Last year at the same time, we showed an average of 63 bpa."

As in corn, the final soybean average was also lower once all trial results were tallied. In 2024, the soybean average fell to 62.3 bpa, which was 11.6 bpa greater than the final USDA soybean average for the year.

"Over the past six years, we've averaged somewhere between 8 to 10 bushels above the final USDA average," Dahle added.

In the September WASDE report, USDA estimated a soybean yield of 53.5 bpa for 2025, up from 50.7 bpa in 2024.

The ongoing federal government shutdown has prevented the release of any new data from USDA in October, including weekly Crop Progress reports typically released on Mondays and the monthly Crop Production and WASDE reports, which was originally scheduled for release on Oct. 9.

Dahle said that when a FIRST trial is harvested, the goal is to have the yield data available online to farmers within 48 hours. All results are available for free on the organization's website: https://www.firstseedtests.com/….

Read more from DTN here: "Plots with Purpose," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Jason Jenkins can be reached at jason.jenkins@dtn.com

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