The U.S. Department of Agriculture has bumped up its forecast for corn production this year in its monthly Crop Production report released Friday.

Corn production is forecast at 13.3 billion bushels, up slightly from September and 26 percent above 2006.

If realized, the 2007 corn crop would be the largest on record, according to the report, with growers harvesting the largest number of acres for grain since 1933.

Around the Green Bay area, farmers have reported a wide range in variability in yields, even from field to field.

Some growers, who got timely rains this summer, said they are looking at respectable to "average" yields, while others in areas severely drought stricken — parts of Door and Marinette counties, for example — say the crop looks poor and in some places the corn stalks are devoid of ears.

Statewide, farmers planted a little more than 4 million acres of corn this year and almost 1.4 million acres of soybeans.

At least one ag-firm is projecting lower production figures than those in the USDA report.

Lanworth Inc. said earlier this week that they expect both corn and soybeans to have lower yields than the September report, though some of those decreases may not show up in the USDA figures until next month.

Lanworth estimates production on corn to be somewhere around 13.11 billion bushels, due mainly to localized drought conditions and variability in planting dates that limited the yield potential of the corn and soybean crops.

That firm puts soybean production at 2.58 billion bushels, 1.4 percent lower than the 2.62 billion bushels reported by the USDA in its September Crop Production Report and 19 percent lower than the 3.19 billion bushels produced in 2006.

In Friday's report, the USDA decreased soybean production by less than 1 percent from the September forecast and down 19 percent from last year's record high.

Soybean production is now forecast at 2.60 billion bushels for 2007.

Copyright (c) 2007. The Northwestern.