The 2018 US Corn Crop is off to a fast start- and the crop ratings are about as good as they have ever been for mid June. According to the June 18 Crop Progress Report- the corn crop has reached 98% emergence as of June 17 – up from 94% a week ago, and in line with last year’s pace and the five-year average, both at 97%. Pennsylvania (83%) and Michigan (87%) are the current outliers, with all other major production states at 96% or greater.
Corn condition has started strong and still managed to gain an additional foothold this past week, moving from 77% of the crop rated good-to-excellent the prior week to 78%. Ahead of the report, analysts actually expected USDA to slightly lower that rating to 76%.
Bryce Knorr with FarmFutures says "overall yield potential for the crop gained more than a half bushel per acre to an average of 184.4 if the ratings last through the growing reason." A corn crop that averages over 180 bushels would largely offset the smaller acres planted this season- and produce a huge crop.
For soybeans- the early season crop ratings are also looking good- but the soybean crop’s condition did degrade slightly – moving from 74% rated good to excellent the prior week down to 73%. That’s still moderately better than this time last year, when 67% of the crop was rated in similar condition. Another 22% of the crop was rated fair, with the remaining 5% rated poor or very poor.
The Winter Wheat Crop in the southern plains saw harvest well ahead of the five year average from Texas into Oklahoma and even Kansas. USDA's wheat harvest numbers stand at 65% for Texas, 73% for Oklahoma and 23% for Kansas. Texas is ten percentage points ahead of the five year average, Oklahoma is 22 percentage points ahead of the five year average and Kansas is 12 percentage points ahead of the average.
Click here to see more...