Tuesday, October 20, 2009
As expected we saw the weekly crop progress numbers show that this year’s corn and soybean harvests are progressing a record-slow pace. The soybean harvest was 30 percent complete nationally as of this past Sunday, which would be the least amount done for that date in at least the past 30 years (the previous low was 34 percent done in 1985). The national corn harvest was 17 percent done as of October 18, which easily surpassed the 22 percent completion figure for that same date in 1992 to make this year’s corn harvest the slowest in at least 30 years. Clearly the brief window of dry weather early this week allowed farmers to get a lot of fieldwork done, with Monday easily the best (and most active) day of harvesting we have seen so far this fall. In 1985, farmers were 43 percent done with the national soybean harvest as of October 25, and with the good weather early this week, I think there is a good chance that we can beat that figure this year so that the national soybean harvest will become “merely” the second slowest in the past 30 years. For the corn harvest though, I think that next week’s numbers will easily show that our current harvest will remain the slowest in at least 30 years. With corn moisture levels so high and with farmers using the early-week dry window to concentrate on the soybean harvest, I think that it is realistic to expect the national corn harvest to still be under 25 percent done as of October 25 (which would compare with 33 percent done on that date in 1992). The weather situation remains far from favorable for rapid harvesting to get done during the last week to ten days of this month. By the end of this work-week, all of the Corn Belt and Delta will have seen at least a half inch of rain, but the majority of locations will have gotten more than an inch and localized rains will easily exceed two inches. While not a lot of precipitation will fall for the weekend and early next week, I think that drying conditions are not all that good and some light precipitation should fall for October 25-26. A little more substantial weather system is then forecast for about October 28-29. Clearly we are going to be doing plenty of harvesting in the month of November this year; my guess would be that more than one-third of the soybean crop will be cut that month (roughly the same as in 1985 but versus a five-year average of less than 15 percent) and that more than two-thirds of the corn will be combined then (versus 56 percent in 1992 and versus a five-year average of less than 25 percent).
