Frost and freeze damage to crops in the Northern Corn Belt last week. Dryness in the Dakotas and upper Midwest impacting crops. A deluge of rain forcing replants in states like Missouri and Kansas. 2021 isn’t off to an ideal start for the U.S. corn and soybean crop.
Yet, USDA’s Crop Progress report this week revealed 76% of the U.S. corn crop is rated good to excellent, 2 points better than this time last year. The ratings strike a nerve with some farmers who are seeing struggling crop stands due to the weather extremes.
“It’s simply going to raise concerns among farmers once again about the crop rating system,” says Arlan Suderman of StoneX Group. “I’m still a believer in a crop rating system. I think it’s the envy of the world. Are there problems with it? Yes. But it’s going to raise those concerns.”
Suderman says while he still sees value in the crop ratings system, it’s not a key statistic this early in the growing season.
“The bottom line is it really doesn’t matter in the first of June,” Suderman adds. “The correlation between crop ratings and final yield is very weak at this time of year. Would we rather have good rated crops at this time of year versus bad rated crops? Absolutely, we would. But bottom line is July makes the corn crop, August makes the soybean crop. This is the general thinking, and we’ve got a long way to go ahead of us for this crop to play out.”
Matt Bennett of AgMarket.Net says the factors to watch going forward aren’t just the ratings week by week, but how those ratings change over time.
“I think one of the things that’s going to matter is what’s the trend going to be from this point forward,” says Bennett. “Are we going to see ratings get better? Are we going to see them get worse? I was not surprised with ratings being good. We had a dry spring. Most people had a pretty darn good stand. Yes, we had cold temperatures, but most of us would prefer a dry spring any day of the week over some of the springs we’ve had here recently. So, I do think that that condition rating is probably warranted here to start.”
Bennett says considering the record heat that entered portions of the Corn Belt to close out the week, those ratings could change in some areas.
“My assumption would be with some of the heat and the issues that we’ve had, and then obviously on the complete flip side of that with some of the freeze situations, there’s probably going to be a little bit of an adjustment moving forward,” says Bennett. “It could be a big adjustment not this Monday, but the following Monday, if we continue to see some of the heat that these forecasts are pushing in, currently.”
