Crop Conditions in your area update

A few weeks back I asked how crops were looking in everyone's area. The general consensus was good-great. After talking with a large number of farmers at the half century of progress they seemed to think that they would now rate crops as average to slightly below average. The only folks I talked to that were still pumped about their crops were farmers in Ohio and Kentucky. The crops I saw while tooling up I57 were not premium. Most beans were short and corn was very patchy with nitrogen deficiency.

What are your thoughts now? I'm thinking the USDA might be off a bit in their estimation, but only time will tell

Another note: The amount of resistant pigweed up I57 is almost beyond comprehension.

In western ny beans over waist high and corn tall with big ears. Even 97 day corn planted in the middle of June is doing great. Never seen so much corn planted in my life. The only average corn I see is stuff planted in late April and first of may which is extremly early here and caught a wet spell but other than that its a bumper crop.

Well......my silage corn is finally tasseling. The pastures are burned up. I baled a field of hay today,wasn't worth a crap. I've got some that is OK,but a lot more that's as poor as what I just baled.

We just got over an inch of needed rain. Our crops still look great here in North-East Iowa. I have talked to guys all over the nation. The worse crops are in the very Eastern corn belt and the upper Midwest. If you thought the crops in IL where not good than that is different than what the fellows I know over there are saying.

As far as the USDA estimate. I think they will be closer than many think they are. There are many areas that have excellent crops and a few with bad crops. So the excellent crops can easily make up for the few bad acres around.

I know guys will say I drove here and there an saw field after field that was not planted or late planted. The fact is nation wide there is a pretty good crop growing. The early harvest numbers I am hearing from the southern states are up 10-20% over normal.

GUYS you are just going to have to face the fact that the high price cycle is swinging the other way. There was not a good basis for the high grain prices. It was a short term thing. The world wide supply was down for a few years. The high prices are taking care of that shortage.

The last few years of high prices have caused problems that will last for many years. One of those things is guys will try and use the few years of high prices to make future marketing decision.

The $10 soybeans did the same thing in the early 1980s. I saw guys drop BIG money because they where holding out for those high prices again. It took 30 years for them to get that high again.

Also it will take years for the production costs to come down to match the prices we will be getting. I do not see much profit in cash grain for the next few years.

Plus the fellows that bought $10-14K per acre ground had better have 2 or 3 acres paid for to make the payments on that high priced ground.

We had some good rain just when it was almost too late. Now we are too dry again. The soybeans set pods but I think they will be a little empty. The second crop beans are hurting for sure.

The resistant pigweed is just an epidemic. The only ones happy are my hogs. Everywhere I go I hack down the most annoying ones and throw them in the pens. Guys are trying to burn them down with spray but they are setting the beans back a good ways in this heat. It might be like some patches of wheat east of the house were this year. I could have sworn it smelled like I was cutting the pasture not cutting wheat.

Only time will tell. I don't feel good about it. When the ground starts cracking and the double crop beans aren't higher than the wheat stubble I get a little pit in my stomach.

Jd I was up at Cascade Thursday morning during your rain for a cousins funeral. That inch of rain was not very wide spread. We got 1/100 or less south of you.

Beans are turning brown south of Cedar Rapids. And the corn is starting to fire all the way south to Missouri.

My corn may be a bit better than last year( might make a 125) but the beans will be worse if we don"t catch a rain in the next week.

Last year was my worst in my 39 years of farming and this one is not looking much better.

I am just 60 miles sw of you. South of me they say it is dryer.

Gary

We need rain badly. hay crops have stalled, beans/corn/potatoes look very sick, unless they are irrigated. I have several hayfields that will never recover to make a second cutting.
Threshed my oats at the local steam show this weekend. Nice crop, but lacked rain at critical time when heads were filling.

We've had pretty good rains all summer which is unusual. Normal is good rain through June into mid July then dry but not this year. Therefore i think the crops will be slightly better this year but we'll see if the profits hold up. I do agree with JDseller that prices will trend down for the next few years, the question is how far and the impact to crops.
Our local elevator is owned/run by Perdue the chicken man and they have run out of corn for feed--just offered $1.30+ premium with no penalties for corn; this week only. Last year was a pretty average year i.e. not a poor crop. So I suspect Perdue has either expanded too far or they sold corn too deeply to meet ther own needs.
Also they've been a little chicken-sh** the last few years with the farmers. Lot guys have put in bins and are selling out of the area--we are not that far from Norfolk and the large foreign shipping companies. Some guys are hauling to Penslvania (sp).
My opinion is prices have to allow us to at least break even.

We have a lot more land in crops around here, ground that hasn't been in crops for many years has been cleared and planted. Several local dairy farms have gone to crops, and sod farms have gone to crops. Even a local golf course have been plowed up. I noticed yesterday that part of the county airport is in beans. And the crops look great.

Terrible, too wet and cold to start, then to dry and cool, now too hot and dry. 80% of my corn wont need a combine run through it, about the same for beans.

West Central Iowa here, I looked @ both the corn and beans today. Pretty happy considering only.85" since mid-june. I'm actually happy it warmed up. Our corn is still green and just starting to dent. Now don't get me wrong some of our sidehills that are weak aren't near as good but they take a perfect year to get a decent crop. We won't have as good of corn crop as last year but we had 3 perfect rains in 2012 that made the corn crop here. I'm still looking for 160bpa for the whole farm average.
The beans are just starting to grow in the pods, the .6" we got last week is still hanging around, I can kick off the top inch and the ground is moist underneath, I have no idea what they'll make. They've gotten pretty tall considering the last 1's were planted June 13. Those were the 1's I checked today.

Soys are turning yellow drying up, some pods but not filled. Corn stalks are dry almost up to the ear. Trees are turning like it's fall but they are really just drying up too. Can sure tell where the moisture is and isn't.

Here in central Ga corn crop looks good and lots have started harvesting but quality issues are showing up with all the rain.(over 10" in a week)
Soybeans and cotton are a very mixed bag with eariler planted stuff looking a lot better than late planted.There are a lot of acres that was in wheat that never got the double crop planted after wheat due to the rains.Overall I think corn will yield great IF we can get it out of the field but beans and cotton will be way less than last year.A lot of the cotton planted behind wheat will run out of time to make before the first frost hits.

Here on the Mason Dixon line, our corn looks to be the best crop we've ever had. Early beans also look great, but late beans, after wheat, don't quite look to be the best I've ever seen. We had a wet spell during wheat harvest, and a lot of the late beans were very late in getting planted. But hay is another story. While there is plenty of it, most isn't really good quality due to the constant showers this year. It's been hard to get more than a few days without rain.

We need rain and heat here in my part of NWIA south of Spencer about 30 miles. We've had some rain now but more is welcome. The corn and beans are in good shape where they weren't drowned out back in June but both crops are very late. The other day I was squirted in the face breaking open an ear of 105 day corn that was planted May 12th. It should be way into the dough stage or black layered by now. The beans on my farm that were planted May 17th are just beginning to get fairly full pods. They might be frost safe by Oct 1. Probably half or more of the beans in my county were planted in June. They won't be frost safe till mid-October or later. My corn looked very uneven up until a few days ago. The slower, shorter corn has caught up with the taller corn, but the corn that was taller is farther ahead and has more mature ears. One row might have 20 feet of row with ears filled out to the end with plump kernals and the next few plants will have ears with little white immature nubbins of kernals. There is practically no denting in the western half of Iowa and we're pushing Sept 1. Jim

September and October will be the big months for us this year. If we have a hard frost in mid-September we will be in a disaster area. Average first killing frost date for these parts is the end of the first week in October. If frost holds off till mid-October my crops will do pretty well. Corn planted in June that needed the heat degree days didn't get enough heat. It will be light weight and poor quality. June planted corn in this area is a full month behind the normal planting date. Jim

Gary,

Where are you at?

I am between Cedar Rapids and Mount Vernon

I'm no farmer but my 1&3/4 acre yard is surrounded by corn on three sides and a little pasture and more corn on the other side. This is the tallest stuff I can remember seeing.
This is top center Illinois 6-8 miles south of wisc. Every time my yard would start to get brown it would rain, just got .7 a couple days ago, crops look super to me.

my alfalfa/grass crop has done well this year. I seemed to have lucked out and mow right before rain. Our ground drains well and the T-storms actually miss us more often than I would like. We are 3 miles east of Stewartstown. The neighbor's 2nd crop beans do not look so good. I recall they put them in during the 2 week hot/dry spell.

Its been a crazy weather year in SWMO...Wet and cool until June 17th with a 6" snow May 3rd...Then no rain from June 17th until July 20th...Then we got 10-20" of rain with floods from July 20th to Aug 9th...No rain since Aug 9th and nothing in sight....Getting dry again.

I would rate the crops below average but better than 2011-2012..Corn maybe 75-100 bushel and the beans were planted so late its too early to tell what they will make...

Went To Rantoul,ILL last week..It was dry all the way from west of St Louis to Rantoul...Coming home it was dry all the way to Quincy and on down to Columbia,MO..

5 miles west of North Liberty.

Much agreed on the price of soybeans making folks come out of the woodwork to plant beans as well as planting areas that have no business being row cropped.

There are some good areas of crop in the country but they are areas that don't have huge amounts of row crop acres. Crops look good in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and up the east coast but those acres pale in comparison to the acres in the corn belt where all the 250 bushel corn is usually made.

I spoke with some guys that were local to Rantoul which all seemed to think that their corn had no chance of making 200. Most seemed to think that their beans still had some yield potential but that they would have to get a rain in the next two weeks for that to become manifest.

I'm thinking that it may be a good year to have storage available for corn to let things all "come to a head" before turning loose.

Maybe the bushels are there but I just cant figure out where it's going to come from.

Beans and corn look really good around here, best in a long time. South Central Michigan, other areas of Michigan not so much. Northeastern Indiana stuff looked good too this week. The 1-1/2" of rain we got this week will just about carry us thru.

west of Lincoln in Nebraska. pivots are all running; irrigated crops will be good. dryland is spotty; we could use an inch of rain.

At this point most of the wheat and other dryland grain has been harvested. There might be some spring wheat in low spots that have more moisture that isn"t quite ready. Bluegrass seed is done and I have been seeing lots of the huge bales of straw going somewhere on semis. We don"t have much irrigated acreage around here, but it looks like the irrigated alfalfa will be ready for a 3rd or 4th cutting in a week or two. The potato harvest will be underway soon.

In Eastern Washington, we are way below our usual precipitation for this time of year, maybe a third, but it doesn"t seem to have hurt the field crops. With the fairly mild Winter we had, the moisture we got sank into the soil rather than running off down the rivers. And we have had good rains several times when we really needed them. Even with only 2/3 of our usual moisture, I think it has been a good year for crops.

On the other hand, it is very dry now, even with a little rain we had overnight. This is the time of year we really have to worry about wildfires--all it takes is a spark or a lightning bolt and you have a fire. With a little wind, they move very rapidly and are hard to put out. Lots of the resources are away fighting the big fires in central Washington and in mid-Idaho. Hope we don"t have to have them here!

Usually about the 20th of September we get some decent rain, which helps the winter wheat germinate and get going. I sure hope we get some moisture before that, and not too much lightning. Living in near-desert conditions, you ALWAYS want more rain. Snow is less appreciated!

My son from Central Wi. had a really wet spring, corn didn't get planted til late June. Then it stopped raining. When he called last week he told me he could stand in the field and look over the top of all the corn.

I wasn't all that far away last year when wife and I went down to Blairstown to get some truck rims. Was a fun trip just to see the hillier side of Iowa.

Crops look good here, tho it just got real real dry and several days of heat to go, the sand and gravel is burning up.

Crops are 2 weeks behind, this heat will help what survives it, but will need a late fall to get a good crop.

Don't have to drive but 40 minutes in 3 directions now to see miserable crops, or lack of any crop getting planted.

Sure depends on the weather yet to call this crop!

Paul

I started barley 2 weeks ago today and have been on wheat since last week... All I've seen so far is a good average crop. The stand looks excellent but it's not making any massive tonnage as the head and kernel size isn't there. Looks like it was too dry when it filled.

Rod