Agricultural News
Corn Plantings Stay Ahead of Five Year Average While the Southern Plains Wheat Crop Remains in Good to Excellent Shape
Tue, 03 May 2016 05:26:35 CDT
Despite cool and damp conditions in parts of the US Midwest, the aggressive pace of planting the 2016 corn crop continued this past week, matching the pace of 2015 and up by fifteen percentage points over the five year average. The 2016 corn crop is now 45% planted nationally, with some of the largest states well ahead of both 2015 and that five year average. Missouri is the leader, with their corn crop now 89% planted, compared to 49% at this point a year ago and 47% for their five year average.
The three "I" states of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana are also well ahead of a year ago and five year plantings- with 57%, 66% and 30% of their corn now in the ground as of May first. Our neighbors to the south, Texas, is one of the few states lagging the five year average, with 66% of the Texas crop now in the ground versus the five year average of 71% done by this date. Texas and Louisiana farmers are dealing with many fields that were flooded and may need to be either replanted or repurposed to other crops as they dry out.
While Oklahoma is not one of the major corn growing states- farmers who grow corn in the Sooner State are now 50% complete, which is up 21 points from a week ago but eight percentage points behind the planting pace of 2015 and fourteen percentage points behind the five year average. The complete Oklahoma Crop Weather Update can be reviewed here.
Other key crops and their planting progress include the US Grain Sorghum crop- which is now 23% planted- behind the 28% planted at this point in 2015 and also lagging the five year pace of 26%. The southern states of Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas all are behind their normal planting for grain sorghum, while Oklahoma with 16% planted is ahead of the five year pace of 13%.
Eight percent of the US Soybean crop has been planted as of May first- that is two points ahead of the five year average- and the US cotton crop is now 16% planted- two points behind the five year average.
As for the Winter Wheat Crop- the latest week shows improvement in the ratings in Oklahoma and Texas- and a slight decline in Kansas. The Oklahoma wheat crop, benefiting from recent rains, improves five percentage points in the latest week to 64% of the crop rated in good to excellent shape. The unknown for the Oklahoma crop are the number of acres damaged by the hail storms of this past weekend- that dropped a lot of ice on several counties in southwestern Oklahoma.
The Texas wheat crop is now 49% in good to excellent shape, one percentage point better than a week ago. The Kansas crop stands at 52% good to excellent, down one point from last week. As the 2016 Winter Wheat Crop Tour kicks off this morning in Manhattan, Kansas, scouts will see wheat fields that have ratings in the good to excellent categories that are almost twice that of last year- 27 percent of the crop was good to excellent a year ago and 32% was rated poor to very poor as they toured the fields in Kansas last May. This year- that poor to very poor number is just 10%.
The complete Crop Progress report can be viewed by clicking here. It includes not just the plantings numbers- but the heading of the US winter wheat crop- the wheat crop ratings and the first ratings of the spring of the Pasture and Range fields across the US.
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