CHICAGO, Ill. (Reuters) — Heavy rainfall and snow across the western two-thirds of the U.S. Midwest and the eastern Plains this week will further slow corn plantings that already are the slowest on record, an agricultural meteorologist said today.
“They certainly won’t get much done this week. There is a big storm system starting Tuesday that will spread in intensity and coverage by Thursday and linger into the weekend,” said Don Keeney, a meteorologist for MDA Weather Services.
Keeney said snow could be expected from Nebraska, eastern Colorado and Kansas and into the northern Midwest with up to 30 centimetres of snow possible in western Iowa.
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“Elsewhere they’ll receive heavy rains of two to three inches (50 to 75 millimetres) or more,” he said.
“The area affected is generally from Illinois westward and it will definitely put a halt to any additional planting,” Keeney said.
Drier weather is expected next week, but temperatures will remain below normal, slowing seeding, plant germination and growth.
Rain around the U.S. Midwest kept farmers out of fields last week, matching the slowest corn planting pace ever, according to government data released yesterday.
The weather also took a toll on the developing winter wheat crop, which deteriorated to its worst condition for this time of year in 17 years.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said corn planting as of April 28 was five percent complete, just one percentage point ahead of where farmers were a week ago. The pace was the slowest since 1984, when farmers also had completed just five percent of their corn planting.
The USDA’s weekly crop progress report showed that the five percent corn planting completion pace as of Sunday was a huge drop from 49 percent during the same week a year ago and down sharply from the 31 percent five-year average seeding pace.
