CHICAGO (Reuters) — The U.S. corn crop was flourishing due to rising temperatures and plentiful soil moisture across the U.S. Midwest, government data released on Monday showed.
The good crop weather also allowed farmers to push soybean planting ahead of the typical pace, more than making up for the slow start to planting that growers suffered through earlier in the spring.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said in its first conditions report of the season that 76 percent of the corn crop was rated good to excellent as of June 1. Analysts had been expecting 70 percent good to excellent, according to the average of estimates in a Reuters poll.
Read Also
Louis Dreyfus buys oilseed assets from Bunge in Poland and Hungary
Louis Dreyfus Company has acquired grains and oilseeds processing, storage and trading activities in Hungary and Poland from rival agricultural commodity merchant Bunge Global, fulfilling conditions Bunge needed to meet to get approval of its merger with Viterra.
A year ago, corn was rated 63 percent good to excellent.
“Warm weather and favourable moisture conditions accelerated crop and pasture growth during the week,” the Iowa field office of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service said in a report.
In Iowa, the top corn production state, corn was rated 82 percent good to excellent. North Dakota corn was 91 percent good to excellent, the best in the country.
Soybean planting advanced to 78 percent complete, three percentage points better than analysts’ forecasts, from 59 percent a week ago. The five-year average for early June is 70 percent.
Spring wheat planting was pegged at 88 percent, up 14 percentage points from a week ago and in line with the five-year average.
“Drier conditions and hot temperatures in the first half of last week allowed significant fieldwork to be performed over much of the state,” North Dakota’s NASS office said. North Dakota is the top spring wheat producer.
Good-to-excellent ratings for the winter wheat crop stabilized at 30 percent, two percentage points below market forecasts, after rising one percentage point a week ago.
