Reviewed August 2026 against USDA NASS and USDA AMS (Market News) reporting.

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Corn Yield Forecast: The Short Answer

The single authoritative US corn yield forecast is USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE), released monthly, typically 8–10 days after month-end. Alongside it, USDA NASS publishes weekly crop condition ratings and the Crop Production report that breaks yield down by state. As of early August 2026, NASS rated 61% of the US corn crop good-to-excellent, with 28% of corn acreage affected by drought — both from the same NASS report cited above. Neither figure is static: NASS refreshes condition ratings every Monday during the growing season, and WASDE revises the national yield number every month through harvest.

This page tracks four things that get searched separately but belong together: the national forecast, the state-by-state breakdown, Argentina’s forecast (a key Southern Hemisphere counterweight to the US crop), and the corn stock price that reacts to all of it. Below, each has its own section, its own numbers, and — where USDA hasn’t published a figure yet — a direct link to where you check it yourself.

Where the US Corn Crop Stands Right Now

USDA NASS’s early-August 2026 crop progress report put 61% of the US corn crop in good-to-excellent condition, with the remaining acreage split across fair, poor, and very poor categories. The same report identified 28% of US corn acreage as drought-affected, concentrated in the areas NASS’s weekly drought overlay flags on its corn yield chart page. Both numbers move weekly, not annually — the condition rating is a Monday release throughout the growing season (typically April through November), so a number from early August tells you little about September without checking again.

For context on how fast a season’s yield outlook can shift: USDA NASS’s own historical series shows the US national corn yield sat at 152.6 bushels per acre in 2010, a baseline useful for measuring how far current trend estimates have moved. Over the long run, Purdue University’s agronomy department calculated that US corn yields rose at an average of 1.9 bushels per acre per year between 1946 and 2000 — a trend line that WASDE’s monthly forecasts oscillate around, sometimes landing above it in a strong year, sometimes well below it after a drought year.

On the demand side, USDA export inspection data (published weekly via the USDA AMS Market News system) showed 79.02 million metric tons of cumulative US corn export inspections as of August 6, 2026, for the current marketing year — running 25% above the same point in the prior year’s cumulative pace. Export pace matters to a yield story because strong shipments draw down ending stocks faster, which is one of the levers WASDE adjusts when it revises the yield or the demand side of its balance sheet.

Corn Yield Forecast by State: Where to Find It

“Corn yield forecast by state” is one of the most-searched variants of this query, and it deserves a direct, honest answer: state-level yield forecasts for the current marketing year (Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, and the rest of the Corn Belt) are published in USDA NASS’s monthly Crop Production report, not folded into the national WASDE headline number. We have not pulled the specific current-season bushel-per-acre figure for each state in this research pass, so rather than approximate one, here is exactly how to get it:

1. Go to USDA NASS’s corn yield chart page and use the state selector to pull historical and current-season yield by state.
2. Cross-reference against the same week’s WASDE release for the national figure the state numbers roll up into.
3. Check the weekly Crop Progress report’s condition-by-state table — a state’s good-to-excellent percentage is often available weekly before the monthly state yield estimate is.

Why this matters for the national number: fringe-acreage states (the Dakotas, for example) carry lower average yields than core Corn Belt states, so a shift in planted-acreage mix between them changes the national average even if no single state’s yield changes at all. A Reuters analysis by columnist Karen Braun examined exactly this question — whether adding fringe US corn acres drags down the national yield average — and is worth reading in full if you’re trying to understand why a state-mix shift can move the headline forecast independent of weather.

Argentina Corn Yield Forecast

Argentina is the Southern Hemisphere’s largest corn exporter after Brazil and plants on a reverse calendar to the US crop, which is why its forecast gets searched alongside the US number — a weak Argentine crop can offset a strong US one in the global balance sheet, and vice versa. Argentina’s 2026/27 forecast currently referenced in trade circles sits near 7.3 tonnes per hectare, though we were not able to source a verified prior-year (2024/25) Argentine yield figure in this research pass for a clean year-on-year comparison, and USDA’s own attaché and WASDE reports are the authoritative source for that comparison rather than any secondary aggregator.

If you need a defensible Argentina-vs-US yield comparison for your own analysis, pull both numbers from the same WASDE release (USDA publishes major foreign producer estimates alongside the US figures in the same monthly document) rather than mixing a WASDE US number with a non-USDA Argentine estimate — the methodologies and marketing-year definitions differ enough to distort a side-by-side.

What Actually Moves a Corn Yield Forecast

Every monthly WASDE revision and every weekly NASS condition update traces back to a small number of inputs. Here’s what to watch, and where each one is published.

1. Weather and Crop Condition Ratings

Weather remains the largest single swing factor in any US corn yield projection, and it shows up first in NASS’s weekly condition ratings before it shows up in a monthly WASDE yield revision. The early-August 2026 snapshot — 61% good-to-excellent, 28% of acreage in drought — is the clearest read available right now, but it is a moving number: NASS updates it every Monday from spring planting through fall harvest, so check the NASS corn yield page directly rather than relying on any cached figure, including this one, once more than a few weeks have passed.

Drought exposure and good-to-excellent ratings move independently of each other — a crop can carry a high drought-acreage percentage while still holding a respectable condition score if the drought is shallow or the affected acres are a minority of the total. Track both together, not just one.

2. Satellite and Precision-Ag Monitoring

Independent of what USDA publishes monthly, field-level satellite monitoring lets an individual grower or agribusiness track crop condition on their own acreage between official releases. This is the gap precision-ag tools are built to fill:

1. Field-specific NDVI tracking: Farmonaut’s satellite-based crop monitoring gives real-time insight into crop health, soil moisture, and growth stage at the field level — a resolution no national USDA report provides.
2. AI-powered advisory: Farmonaut’s Jeevn AI delivers planting and input-timing recommendations customized to current weather and soil conditions, rather than a 30-day-old NASS county average.
3. Large-area monitoring: Agribusinesses and cooperatives managing acreage across multiple states can compare their own satellite-derived condition data against the NASS state-level baseline to spot where they’re over- or under-performing the regional trend.

3. Trade, Exports, and Corn Stock Price

Export pace is one of the fastest-moving inputs into the supply-demand balance that sits behind every WASDE yield-and-stocks table. As of August 6, 2026, cumulative US corn export inspections for the marketing year stood at 79.02 million metric tons, 25% ahead of the same point in the prior marketing year, per USDA’s AMS Market News reporting system. Faster-than-normal exports draw down ending stocks, which tightens the balance sheet even if the yield forecast itself hasn’t changed — a distinction worth keeping straight when a price move gets attributed to “yield news” that was actually a demand-side revision.

On price: corn futures react within minutes of a WASDE release when the yield or stocks number surprises the market. A Reuters column by Karen Braun walked through a case where CBOT corn rallied sharply after USDA cut US ending stocks, and argued the rally was more than justified by the supply cut — a useful read for understanding how a single stocks revision can move price disproportionately to the size of the physical change. For a live corn stock price check rather than a historical snapshot, go to your brokerage’s CBOT corn futures quote or a market-data terminal directly; this article isn’t the place to publish a moving number that’s already stale by the time you read it.

4. Pest and Disease Pressure

Pest and disease pressure is not separately quantified in the USDA NASS or WASDE releases used for this article, but it feeds into the same weekly condition ratings covered above — a disease outbreak or insect pressure event typically shows up as a drop in the good-to-excellent percentage before it’s called out by name in any narrative report. Integrated pest management and disease-resistant corn varieties remain the standard mitigation tools; real-time field monitoring (satellite or scouting) is what catches pressure early enough to act on it within a season rather than after harvest.

5. Soil Health and Fertility

Soil health practices — crop rotation, cover cropping, and reduced tillage — support yield stability over multiple seasons rather than moving any single monthly forecast. They matter most as a hedge against the drought exposure already discussed: soil with higher organic matter and better structure typically holds moisture longer into a dry spell, which is part of why drought-acreage percentage and yield outcome don’t move in perfect lockstep from field to field. Field-level soil moisture mapping — through a platform like Farmonaut — lets a grower see this variability directly rather than assuming a county-average condition rating applies evenly across their acreage.

Corn Yield Data Table: 2010 Baseline vs. Current Trend

Rather than publish a single-year snapshot that goes stale, this table anchors on the one long-run, independently verifiable baseline in the research record — USDA NASS’s 2010 national yield figure — against the long-run trend growth rate Purdue’s agronomy department calculated. Use it to sanity-check any current-season forecast: a WASDE number well above or below where the trend line would put it is exactly the kind of gap worth understanding before you act on it.

How to keep this current: the trend-line and 2010 baseline rows won’t change — treat them as fixed reference points. The bottom four rows update on a fixed schedule (condition ratings weekly, export inspections weekly, WASDE monthly) — refresh them from the linked USDA sources rather than assuming this snapshot still holds.

Why Forecast Revisions Move Markets

A single WASDE revision can move corn futures within minutes because the report is the market’s most trusted, most current estimate of US supply and demand — there is no higher-frequency official substitute. The mechanism has three parts:

• Market volatility: the Reuters column on the CBOT corn rally following a US ending-stocks cut is a documented case of exactly this dynamic — a stocks revision, not a yield change, driving a futures rally.
• Trade and acreage decisions: the Reuters analysis on fringe-acreage yield drag shows how planting-mix decisions, not just weather, feed into the national yield number policymakers and traders react to.
• Supply chain and export flow: a 25% year-over-year jump in cumulative export inspections (79.02 million metric tons as of Aug. 6, 2026) changes the demand side of the balance sheet independent of anything happening in the field, and WASDE has to reconcile both sides every month.

Corn Yield Risk Calculator

This calculator applies the current national condition split (61% good-to-excellent, 28% drought-affected, per USDA NASS, Aug 2026) to your own acreage and expected yield, so you can see a rough bushel-at-risk range instead of just reading the national percentage.

How to Track Your Own Corn Yield Forecast

The national and state numbers above tell you the baseline, but the durable move is building a habit of checking the right sources on the right schedule, rather than reading a single figure once a season. Here’s the cadence:

1. Check WASDE monthly

• USDA releases WASDE roughly 8–10 days after each month ends. Bookmark usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde and check the publication calendar directly rather than relying on a remembered date, since the schedule shifts around holidays and government closures.

2. Check NASS crop condition weekly during the growing season

• The good-to-excellent percentage and the drought-acreage overlay both update every Monday from planting through harvest at NASS’s corn yield chart page.

3. Check export inspections weekly if you trade or hold physical positions

• USDA AMS Market News publishes export inspection data weekly — this is the fastest-moving demand-side indicator and often moves ahead of any WASDE revision.

4. Layer field-level monitoring on top of the national numbers

• National and state figures are averages. Farmonaut’s satellite-based farm management platform gives field-specific condition data so you can see where your own acreage sits relative to the county or state average, rather than assuming it tracks the headline number exactly.

5. Use resilient varieties and diversification as the standing hedge

• Since drought and condition swings recur every season in some form, drought-tolerant hybrids and crop diversification remain standing risk-reduction tools independent of any single year’s forecast.
• Farmonaut’s carbon footprinting solutions also support sustainable farm management and compliance reporting alongside yield tracking.

Farmonaut and Precision Farming in Corn Production

National forecasts tell you what happened in aggregate; they can’t tell you what’s happening in your own field this week. That gap is what precision-ag platforms are built to close.

Farmonaut provides:

• Satellite-based crop health monitoring (NDVI, soil moisture analysis): early detection of water stress, nutrient deficiency, or pest impact at the field level — well ahead of the next scheduled NASS or WASDE release.
• Jeevn AI advisory system: hyper-local weather forecasts, planting-date suggestions, and AI-driven nutrient and pest management, available via iOS, Android, and web.
• Blockchain traceability and API integration: farm-to-market traceability solutions for supply chain and food-safety compliance. Developers can integrate real-time satellite and weather data via the Farmonaut API and API developer docs.
• Fleet and resource management: Farmonaut’s fleet management tools support logistics and cost control across planting, fertilization, and harvest.
• Large-scale farm monitoring: Agro Admin tools let organizations monitor thousands of acres, tracking yield estimates, field conditions, and risk alerts from a single dashboard.

Explore More Farmonaut Resources

• Mobile Satellite Crop Monitoring: Track every field, get real-time health alerts, and optimize input use with the Farmonaut Android app or iOS app.
• API Access for Developers: Integrate real-time, field-level satellite data into your agri-platforms or research tools via the Farmonaut API. See detailed integration guides in our API Developer Docs.
• Crop Loan & Insurance Verification: Optimize, verify, and secure your crop loan and insurance processes with Farmonaut’s satellite-based verification tools — minimizing fraud and accelerating turnaround for financial institutions.
• Large Scale Farm Monitoring: Governments and larger agribusinesses can use the Agro Admin App for managing, visualizing, and making policy-driven decisions across thousands of acres.

FAQ: Corn Yield Forecast

Further reading:

• USDA corn projections 2025
• Chicago corn futures surged by nearly 5%

Conclusion

The corn yield forecast isn’t one number — it’s a monthly WASDE release, a weekly NASS condition update, a state-by-state breakdown, and a South American counterpart in Argentina, each on its own publication schedule. As of early August 2026, the US crop stood at 61% good-to-excellent with 28% of acreage in drought, export inspections were running 25% ahead of the prior year’s pace at 79.02 million metric tons cumulative, and the long-run trend growth rate of 1.9 bushels per acre per year off the 2010 baseline of 152.6 bu/acre remains the yardstick against which any single season’s number should be measured.

None of those figures will still be current by the time you’re reading this months from now — that’s the nature of a forecast. What doesn’t expire is the method: check WASDE monthly, check NASS condition ratings weekly, check export inspections weekly if you trade, and layer field-level satellite monitoring on top of the national averages to see where your own acreage actually sits.

Ready to track your own fields against the national numbers?
Get started with Farmonaut’s satellite-driven solutions.