Corn Belt

Really looking in rough shape, very brown, very burnt up, 70% statewide, very poor to poor.

And even as far east as the western Corn Belt, Minnesota this week coming in at 54% of the range land of pastures rated very poor to poor.

I'm Rod Bain reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.

We're cutting to a short break now on agriculture today, but when we come back from that break, we'll be joined by Kansas State University meteorologist Chip Redmond as he shares what weather we saw recently in Kansas and what he's predicting for our forecast.

The soybean yield went up a tenth, though, and I know some folks were kind of scratching their heads at that one a little bit, Dwayne.

Well, yeah, I understand scratching your head, but we always got to remember when was this information gathered to because honestly, from a month ago during the August USDA report, I actually increased my soybean yield then because, man, we had a lot of rain going through the Midwest, especially the eastern Corn Belt.

And I was like, man, rain makes grain, especially soybean yields in August.

And then the rain shut off.

And then we found out that the rain that did fall in the eastern corn belt was too much for some areas.

So then the yield kind of dipped down.

So they shouldn't be too alarmed and too worried about the soybean yield.

But there was no doubt that maybe lower fertility rates in adverse or extreme weather did have an impact on this crop, right?

Oh yeah, I think that all the way from the beginning of the planting season all the way through and whether it was lower seeding rates to try to stretch a bag of seed corn a little bit farther across the acre, whether it was reduced inputs because of the high fertilizer prices, Whatever the case may be, the poor weather that we had in some areas during the planting season at emergence, and then obviously the July weather, the heat and dryness that we faced across much of the Corn Belt there took away from yield as well.

So, Brian, do you think that our final yield is going to be, what, a 176? Where are you at?

I'm at 177.2. That's the same number that I had in August, and I'm sticking with it.

Last year, it was completely reversed from that because of the trade situation with China.

We're back to a more normal situation on exports this year, meaning the soybeans will dominate in the September through January, February timeframe.

Yeah, and I'm really glad you brought that up because we had no export program up here in the Northwestern Corn Belt last year.

And we did see that shuffling in terms of corn going out versus beans.

It wasn't there for a while, but now it is.

Sunday kicks off an exceptionally wet five-day stretch across the northwestern Corn Belt with core zones across Iowa and neighboring states projected to see around 2 to 4 inches north.

Although, even though they're going to see this rain, Mr. Craig Solberg is saying it shouldn't impact harvest too much.

We'll see how that plays out.

When we look at crops, certainly hearing a lot of corn silage going into bunkers and All the fun festivities of harvest there.

But when we look at it from according to the USDA, we're reporting another mixed week for crop conditions as harvest gets underway here in the Corn Belt.

As of Sunday, 56% of U.S. corn was rated good to excellent, down one percentage point and the lowest rating of the growing season.

5% of the crop was harvested ahead of the five-year average of 3%, while 96% was in the dough stage, 76% was dented, and 25% had reached maturity.

Really looking in rough shape, very brown, very burnt up, 70% statewide, very poor to poor.

And even as far east as the western Corn Belt, Minnesota this week coming in at 54% of the range land of pastures rated very poor to poor.

I'm Rod Bain reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.

We're cutting to a short break now on agriculture today, but when we come back from that break, we'll be joined by Kansas State University meteorologist Chip Redmond as he shares what weather we saw recently in Kansas and what he's predicting for our forecast.

Well, let's start there.

Given where we are now and thinking over the next month or two as we head into harvest, for that kind of center of the corn belt, what do you see in store? Any optimism for kind of that pattern evening out a bit and letting folks get into the field and...

harvest

it might be hard for the next couple of weeks so through maybe the end of september it might stay on on the wet side you know just this week that we're talking des moines had six inches of rain

So those are a few of the more storage logistics, some of the things to wait for there.

basis i'm i'm really friendly on in the western corn belt i could see that thanksgiving to christmas time frame still being an okay time of the year to try to get good basis levels but like i said soybeans if you can take advantage any of the early basis levels i'd try to get some of those gone as well my outlook other than that jayden is is just going to be this uh very volatile very volatile futures here direction coming up this next week could tell us a lot

Well, thanks, Mike, for all your insight.

Nonetheless, a lot of moving parts going ahead in these grain markets.

And I was talking to one of my appraiser buddies, ALC appraiser buddies.

It's in several counties in the Corn Belt.

And he said, well, we had a farm class A, water, pivots, the whole thing.

He said it brought $38,000 an acre.