Monday, May 16, 2011

Corn Planting Slow, Especially In Ohio

Des Moines Register:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that despite gains last week, corn planting still lags behind last year and five-year averages because of cold, wet weather in the Corn Belt east of the Mississippi River, and in Minnesota and the Dakotas, as well as flooding in the Lower Mississippi River valley.
The corn market reflected nervousness about corn supplies, driving up the price for the July contract 16 cents per bushel to $6.98 Monday on the Chicago Board of Trade.
The national crop is now 63 percent planted, the USDA said, compared to 87 percent planted last year and 75 percent planted over a five-year average.
Farmers generally want their corn crop planted by mid-May to avoid yield loss during later pollination during August heat, or vulnerability to early frost in September.
Iowa’s crop is 92 percent planted as of Sunday, the USDA said. That compares to 96 percent last year and 84 percent in a five-year average between 2006 and last year.
But while Iowa benefited from warm weather last week and the widespread use of larger planters, other states haven’t fared as well. Just 69 percent of Illinois’ crop is planted compared with 96 percent last year; only 29 percent of Indiana’s crop is in and just 7 percent of Ohio’s corn is planted.
That is right, things are going extremely poorly here.  We are around 20% planted, but it went into marginal ground, and the forecast doesn't look very good either. 

2 comments:

  1. Any farmers in Ohio with corn to sell? Or is all the $6.98 corn already locked up by Cargill and friends?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Some guys still have some corn to sell, but a lot of what is in storage is either contracted to Cargill or one of the ethanol plants, or being held for feed. Not too many people anticipated the record low stocks this year. The export demand snuck up on folks.

    ReplyDelete