Corn yields to increase 40 percent by 2018, DuPont says; corn glut looms when ethanol mandate stops growing in 2015?

In testimony before the US Senate, the chairman of DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred subsidiary projected a 40 percent rise in corn and soybean yields by 2018, with corn reaching an average US yield of 225 bushels per acre. When questioned about the projection, Dean Oestrich told Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa that “it is a plan, and not an aspiration”. Based on these figures, and assuming an increase in yield to 2.9 gallons per bushel and corn plantings at this year’s levels (87 million acres), corn ethanol would utilize 23 percent of the 2018 corn harvest to make 15 billion gallons of fuel and 1708 billion bushels of distillers grains. This would leave the 18.7 billion bushels of corn for the food and livestock markets (after allowing for dried distillers grains), up from 10.903 billion bushels in 2007.

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