Agricultural News
Corn and Soybean Crop Ratings Continue to Fall- As Do Pasture Ratings Across the Heartland
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:23:38 CDT
The downward path of corn and soybean condition ratings continued Monday with 48% of the nation's corn and 37% of the soybeans now rated poor to very poor. Last week 45% of the corn was rated poor to very poor, compared to this week's 48%. Reports are streaming in from the midwest daily of dead and dying fields, fields being zeroed out for crop insurance purposes, fields being chopped for silage where possible. And in some cases, it's not.
Missouri remains the worst state in the country of the major corn producing states in the condition of its crop- eighty three percent of the Missouri corn crop is now rated poor to very poor. Indiana actually improved two percentage points in the latest week- climbing up from 71% poor to very poor to 69% poor to very poor this week. The Illinois corn crop looks very rough at 71% poor to very poor, while hot dry weather in Iowa even pushing hard on their corn crop condition, which slipped eight percentage points in the last week- now standing at 46% poor to very poor.
Last week 35% of the nation's soybeans were rated poor to very poor, compared to this week's 37%. Timely rains may help some soybean fields pull out of their tailspin. But with 55% of the crop reported in the pod setting stage this week more and more production is becoming susceptible to hot, dry weather during a critical development stage. The two hardest hit major soybean states are once again Missouri and Illinois- Missouri at 72% poor to very poor and Illinois 66% poor to very poor.
One southern crop that continues to look great is the 2012 Peanut crop- now rated at 69% good to excellent, up by two percentage points in the latest week. The southwestern states of Georgia, Florida and Alabama all are in largely good to excellent condition- and even the Oklahoma peanut crop is coping well- apparently- with the current weekly rating of 71% good to excellent.
Finally, pasture and range conditions show no sign of slowing the ratings decline- with another two percentage point increase in the poor to very poor category. The latest readings nationally show 57% of the US pasture and ranges are in poor to very poor shape. Missouri is on the verge of being universally awful- now at 98% Poor to very poor versus 96% in the week ago report, while Illinois has climbed to a 95% rating of poor to very poor, Indiana is unchanged from a week ago at 89% poor to very poor and Kansas slides further in the pasture and range ratings- up another two percentage points from a week ago to 88% poor to very poor. Arkansas saw a two percentage point improvement because of recent rains- but remains at 84% poor to very poor rating. By the way- the flash drought of very dry and extremely hot across Oklahoma has slammed our pasture ratings- a week ago we had pasture range ratings of 52% poor to very poor- this week they are at 64% poor to very poor.
To see the full US Crop Progress report as released by the National Ag Statistics Service of the USDA, click here for the report of July 30, 2012.
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