Corn harvest looks big, thanks to ethanol demand

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Waiting to unload corn at a grain elevator this week, Kyle Winkelmann took a few minutes to marvel at how rain had fallen on his central Illinois fields at just right times this season.

Before he could finish talking, though, Winkelmann was headed back to his fields near Tallula, a dozen miles northwest of Springfield, trying to keep up with the combines.
“I keep hauling corn and hauling corn and hauling corn and never get anywhere, you know?” Winkelmann joked during a phone conversation. Mind you, “I’m not really complaining.”

That’s because there’s a lot of corn in his fields, and in others all over the Midwest.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday raised its already-high expectations for the crop to 13.3 billion bushels, which would be an all-time high and 27 percent more than last year’s 10.5 billion bushels.

Those figures don’t usually mean much outside of farm country, but the size of this year’s crop figures heavily in two areas Americans who don’t farm tend to think about a lot: fuel and the price of food.

Examiner.com