Crop Reports

United States Crop Report - August 19, 2010

In the last 7 days Rob and I have been to Indiana, Southern IL, Mo, in east central IL from Monticello half way to Chicago and so far have found only one field of beans that is legitimately starting to turn. There are scattered areas that seem to have some SDS or a mild strain of it. But in the areas we have visited, beans look very good—lots of pods and blooms and great potential. In these areas, a rain in the next 3 days is almost essential to make more beans and to fill out the pods already set. That would also aid in moving the beans toward maturity.

We will probably not see any beans until the weeks of the 20th and 27th of September at the earliest, with no significant volume until FH Oct. Makes one think that the crusher premiums may stay around a bit more.

The beans are 36-42 inches high

There are many private tours out this week—Pro Farmer is the national one we hear and there are 2 or 3 coop groups in the Champaign IL area walking the fields. We are hearing pod counts substantially higher than year ago in most bean areas. Exceptions would be Ohio and of course Iowa(very hard to evaluate because of the floods and because we hear a lot of SDS talk from Iowa.

In the corn world, we seem to have better than year ago prospects except for an area of central Illinois where high temperatures following May and June rains, and followed by sparse rains have significantly hurt corn yields.

Moderate temperatures for the last 5 days(14-19 August) with highs in the low to mid 80s(26-28C). We are supposed to have another round of high temps late in the weekend.

As the pictures show, we have exceptional foliage and podding in the soybeans.