While we had another week of trade discussions dominating headlines regarding ag commodities markets, especially important news for the markets came out of reports released last week by the USDA regarding crop conditions here in the U.S..

The Crop Progress and Production reports were released Monday and Tuesday, respectively, and

Monday, June 11th, 2018: USDA Crop Progress

Monday’s Crop Progress Report described what many thought was likely: that weather conditions in previous weeks caused spring wheat, corn, and soybean crops to mature a little faster than their five-year averages. Beans, in particular, seemed to do well during a hot week  – not only were the nationwide planting and emergence reports a little further along than the five-year average, the percentages of beans nationally that were described as “good” or “excellent” quality were higher than last year.

Link to full report: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProg/CropProg-06-11-2018.pdf

 

Tuesday, June 12th, 2018: USDA Crop Production Report 

Highlights from the Crop Production Report:

  • While Winter Wheat was up 1% from the May estimate, it was still down 6% from 2017’s figures
  • Yields per hectare for wheat were down slightly from 2017, from 3.38 metric tons/hectare to 3.25 in 2018.
  • A “belt” of high temperatures – arcing from the Texas panhandle all the way to West Virginia – really precipitated the aforementioned rapid development of grain crops in the area. This hot weather (the U.S.’ hottest May on record), thankfully, was offset in terms of drought conditions by wetter weather over the Midwest.

may weather report.PNG

(per the report/NOAA Regional Climate Center) 

Link to full report: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProd/CropProd-06-12-2018.pdf