New York farms are forecast to have produced 102.7 million bushels of corn for grain in 2018, up 31.5 percent from 78.1 million bushels produced in 2017, the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service recently reported.

New York farms harvested 630,000 acres of corn for grain this year, up 30 percent from 485,000 acres last year, the agency said.

The estimated total yield per acre in the Empire State, as of Sept. 1, 2018, was 163 bushels of corn, up 1.2 percent from 161 bushels in 2017.  

In neighboring Pennsylvania, corn for grain production was forecast to have declined slightly to  147.2 million bushels in 2018 from 148.1 million bushels in 2017, the USDA reported.

Nationally, U.S. farms produced an estimated 14.8 billion bushels this year, up 1.5 percent from last year’s production of 14.6 billion bushels, according to the USDA.