Discussing Missouri's Farmland distribution and why the middle of the state is valued less.
If we take a look at the FarmlandStats.com corn yields dashboard, you'll notice strong concentrations of corn yields in a few specific areas of the state of Missouri - but not in the middle. I scratched my head to figure out why is the middle just absent of collected data?
My first thought was, does it have something to do with irrigation and the Mississippi river as the eastern border? While the Mississippi can be both a blessing and a curse for farming, one would expect the yields and cash rent to be similar along the whole border, however this is not the case as the south east corner is considerably higher (darker).
I then questioned is there a difference in rainfall that is occurring throughout the state. The USDA put out data taking the annual rainfall of Missouri over 30 years. If we compare one of the best counties, New Madrid to the less yielding county of Pulaski - we can see the New Madrid on average annually got 50 inches of rain and Pulaski got 46 inches. According to Purdue University, dryland farming needs above 25 inches of rain and ideally 45 inches or more. Unfortunately this doesn't really answer why Pulaski and other middle counties seem like poor performers. Pulaski got less then New Madrid, but plenty of rain to make for good corn harvesting.
A step closer to the real answer starts at looking at the topography of Missouri. Below I have provided multiple different maps to help see what's causing this. First, its important to note that the Mark Twain national forest is extremely forested and covers a large portion of the southern land in Missouri.
While there are farms, it is harder to farm because the Ozark highlands is a very mountainous regions ( below) and has
lots of sub-optimal land. Uniquely the Mark Twain forest is a mix of public and private land.
The public land that resides in the forest was born in the Great Depression. In order to stimulate the economy, President Roosevelt funded the national parks service to purchase land from willing landowners in need of money. Many struggling farmers sold their worst pieces of land to the Forest Service. However, this resulted in a "quilted" landscape of now public forest and private land that today is the Mark Twain national forest. This is a big reason why farming data is so absent in the middle of Missouri. While there are farms lots of land is public, or residential private land that represent historic homesteads.
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