WJEZ file photo

By Jim Anderson–Illinois Radio News

The final numbers are in for the 2014 harvest.

Corn came in at 200 bushels an acre in Illinois – 2.35 billion bushels total – an increase of 12 percent from 2013, according to data from the USDA.

Rod Weinzierl, director of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, credits mostly the weather, which he says wasn’t perfect, but it was darn good for growing corn. “Maybe the soil was a little wet when we planted it or maybe we waited a week later to plant it than what we normally would have. You know, you always have those situations, but by and large, almost everything went right,” he said.

He says farmers are holding onto much their corn, waiting for the price to go up. March corn settled Monday at $4.02 on the Chicago Board of Trade, which Weinzierl says is about the break-even point for farmers.

Soybeans yielded 56 bushels an acre. Production was 547 million bushels, a 15 percent increase from 2013.

This report makes Illinois the No. 1 state in the nation for soybeans in 2014, and No. 2, behind Iowa, for corn, in terms of production.