In today’s weekly report, the key takeaway was that the national corn condition rating was expected to improve from last week due to widespread heavy rains over much of the Corn Belt, but instead, the good to excellent rating actually went down by one percentage point.
Similarly, analysts were looking for an improvement in soybean condition ratings, but overall, the national rating stayed unchanged from last week.
However, the condition of the spring wheat crop followed last week’s 10 percentage point drop with another decline of seven points in the good to excellent categories - taking that rating down to an exceedingly low 20 percent level. It’s hard to believe that 39 percent of the nation’s spring wheat crop is in poor to very poor condition in this report.
Grain sorghum (milo) dropped 3 points, but remains at a respectable 70 percent rating.
Cotton conditions remained unchanged at 52 percent good to excellent while rice ratings declined by one point and the national peanut rating stayed unchanged but featured wide swings in ratings among key producing states.
Winter wheat harvest activity gained some momentum early last week, but came to a screeching halt when heavy rains pounded active harvest areas. Their progress improved to 33 percent complete, but is still running seven points behind the five year average.
Pasture condition ratings held steady in Texas, but dropped significantly in key cattle states of Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Montana, and New Mexico. Slight improvement was seen in Wyoming and Nebraska.
Most of the regular contenders stayed atop the short to very short categories in the soil moisture conditions. South Dakota has the dubious honor of having the driest topsoil with 90 percent of the state rated short to very short - two points more than last week. Meanwhile, New Mexico reportedly has the driest subsoil moisture conditions with 91 percent short to very short - an additional one point from last week.
