David Hula doesn’t just know how to grow corn. He’s arguably the king of corn yields, and not in an area that’s necessarily known for growing monster yields.
Hula doesn’t farm in the heart of the Midwest where farmers are no stranger to big yields. The fertile farmland where he calls home is just 60 miles from the Atlantic coast in Charles City, Va.
He knows no year is perfect, but this year has been far from ideal.
“Every year is different, you know, every grower is up to a challenge,” Hula says. “And in 2025, we had a great planting it started out perfect. I mean we had good moisture and [it was] dry when planting, then all of a sudden after we were done planting, we got some rain. Then we got rain, and then we get cold. After that, things have been pretty decent except for this last 10 days we’ve been hot.”
That lack of GDUs might not be an issue for long. It wasn’t just hot to end June. Hula saw triple digit heat for a week straight.
“The heat that we’re having right now, which we’re having heat indexes well over 100, but the 100-day corn that we got planted, they’re pollinating now. So that’s a little bit of a concern, because I woke up this morning, and it was like 78°F, which corn likes to cool down at night. So I’m concerned a little bit, but not nearly as much as I would be concerned if we had the same kind of heat two weeks from now.”
Hula is the reigning world corn yield record holder. In 2023, these soils produced a corn yield of 623.84 bu. per acre. He’s broken the world corn yield record not just once, but five times.
But Hula isn’t sure 600-bu.-per-acre corn is in the cards for this year.
“It’s going to take more than one acre to do that this year,” Hula says. “That’s what my thought is right now, because of the way the season’s been, but we still have a long way to go before we’re finished because right now we have our 100-day corn pollinating. Our normal 111-to-114-day corn, we’re still 10 days from our pollinating. So, a lot can go in their favor, but the odds aren’t stacked in their favor right now.”
Just How High Will the National Corn Yield Be This Year?
Hula might not be staring at a record-breaking yield, but crop conditions are improving across the U.S. USDA’s latest crop progress report posted a corn crop rating of 73% good to excellent, which was a three-point jump in just a week. The best condition ratings are in Pennsylvania, Iowa and North Carolina.
While USDA’s crop condition ratings don’t translate to a specific yield, with strong conditions, it’s possible the U.S. will not only see a national record corn yield this year, but crush the previous record.
“The chatter’s out there,” says Joe Vaclavik of Standard Grain. “You hear the talk of the potential for something in the mid 180s, even as high as 190 [bu. per acre yield]. We haven’t been above trend in U.S. corn yields since 2018. That was the last time we were above trend. But there was a string of years, 2014 through 2018, we were above trend by a few percentage points every single one of those years. If you end up 2% above trend this year, you’re close to 185 bu. per acre. If you ended up 5% above the trend, you’re at 190.”
Considering the U.S. national corn yield has never topped 180 bu. per acre, that would be a huge jump. However, Vaclavik says he doesn’t even like throwing out those big yield numbers so early, as there are other factors that also matter to the market.
“The fact that we’ve got so many acres, the fact that maybe farmers reduced inputs, but the crop ratings alone in a vacuum would suggest that those sort of numbers are possible,” Vaclavik says. “I’m a little skeptical, but the statistics would say it’s a possibility.”
AgResource Company founder and CEO Dan Basse agrees with Vaclavik. The national corn yield could be in the range of 185 bu. to 190 bu. per acre, especially if the weather forecasts continues to show favorable conditions.
“I hate to say it, but as we start to model out condition ratings and yield, yes,” Basse says. “We need to get into August before we get some solidarity in all of this. But today it looks good. The weather forecast for the next couple of weeks look favorable, cooler temperatures with enough rain. So this is a special corn crop.”
It’s not perfect everywhere. More than 25% of the U.S. is experiencing drought conditions.
Is the forecast pointing to drought expansion in July, or will the U.S. see doses of moisture this month? Watch USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey discusses the July forecast with U.S. Farm Report.
