USDA Weekly Crop Progress Report

Crop Progress: Winterlike Weather Last Week Slows Corn, Soybean Planting

Anthony Greder
By  Anthony Greder , DTN/Progressive Farmer Content Manager
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(DTN photo illustration by Nick Scalise)

This article was originally posted at 3:12 p.m. CDT on Monday, April 18. It was last updated at 3:57 p.m. CDT on Monday, April 18.

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OMAHA (DTN) -- Farmers made little headway planting corn and soybeans last week as winterlike weather returned to much of the Midwest and Northern Plains, USDA NASS reported in its weekly Crop Progress report on Monday. In addition, dry weather in major winter-wheat-growing regions eroded the crop's condition last week.

CORN

-- Planting Progress: 4% nationwide as of Sunday, April 17, up just 2 percentage points from the previous week, 3 percentage points behind last year's 7% and 2% points behind the five-year average of 6%.

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-- States at the top and bottom last week: Texas led the way in corn-planting progress at 64%. On the low end of other states that had started planting, Nebraska and Pennsylvania reported just 2% of corn planted. Several other states reported no progress, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

SOYBEANS

-- Planting Progress: 1% nationwide as of Sunday. That was 2 percentage points behind last year's 3% and slightly behind the five-year average of 2%.

-- States at the top and bottom last week: Louisiana reported the most progress at 23%. On the low end of states that had started planting were Kansas and Tennessee, at 1% complete. Several other states reported no planting progress, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Ohio.

WINTER WHEAT

-- Crop development progress: 7% of the winter wheat crop was headed nationwide as of Sunday. That's 2 percentage points behind last year's 9% and 5 percentage points behind the five-year average of 12%.

-- States at the top and bottom last week: California's winter wheat crop was the furthest along at 65% headed. Texas wheat was next furthest along at 30%. Of the other states reporting winter wheat heading, the lowest was Missouri, with just 1% of winter wheat headed compared to its five-year average of 7%. Other major winter-wheat-producing states reported no wheat headed, including Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

-- Crop condition: Nationwide, winter wheat was rated 30% good to excellent, dropping 2 percentage points from 32% the previous week. The current rating is well below last year's good-to-excellent rating of 53%.

"The current rating is the lowest good-to-excellent rating at this time of year in at least two decades," said DTN Senior Analyst Dana Mantini. "Winter wheat condition ratings in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas all declined from last week, and are at 33%, 21% and 6% good to excellent, respectively, with Oklahoma falling 8 percentage points from a week ago. Montana is just 16% good to excellent and 30% very poor to poor."

To view weekly crop progress reports issued by National Ag Statistics Service offices in individual states, visit http://www.nass.usda.gov/…. Look for the U.S. map in the "Find Data and Reports by" section and choose the state you wish to view in the drop-down menu. Then look for that state's "Crop Progress & Condition" report.

National Crop Progress Summary
This Last Last 5-Year
Week Week Year Avg.
Corn Planted 4 2 7 6
Soybeans Planted 1 NA 3 2
Cotton Planted 10 7 11 9
Winter Wheat Headed 7 5 9 12
Spring Wheat Planted 8 6 18 9
Sorghum Planted 17 14 15 19
Oats Planted 34 29 48 39
Oats Emerged 24 23 30 28
Barley Planted 17 11 24 15
Rice Planted 22 17 32 36
Rice Emerged 13 10 16 18
Sugarbeets Planted 7 6 24 16

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National Crop Condition Summary
(VP=Very Poor; P=Poor; F=Fair; G=Good; E=Excellent)
This Week Last Week Last Year
VP P F G E VP P F G E VP P F G E
Winter Wheat 19 18 33 27 3 18 18 32 29 3 6 11 30 46 7

Anthony Greder can be reached at anthony.greder@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @AGrederDTN

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Anthony Greder

Anthony Greder
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