Fundamentally Speaking

On Monday, USDA released its national corn condition report for week 27 (usually around the second week of July) amid widespread expectations that based on good rains in a number of the top producing states last week, the combined percent of the U.S. corn crop rated in the good to excellent category would increase by at least 1% from last week's combined 64%.

Surprisingly however, crop ratings stayed the same at 64% and now with hot and dry weather forecast over the next two weeks, crop conditions are seen deteriorating to some extent.

Using our usual ratings system, we weight the crop based on the percent in each category and assign that category a factor of 2 for very poor, 4 for poor, 6 for fair, 8 for good, and 10 for excellent and then sum the results.

This graph shows the week 27 corn ratings for the top 18 producing states and the U.S. for this year along with the average, worst and best week 27 ratings for the time period 2000-2022.

We also plot the week 23 corn rating for the top states and the U.S. to see how conditions have changed over the past month.

The week 27 U.S. rating this year is 726 which is the second worst rating for this time of year since 2013, slightly below the 2000-2022 average of 741 with the high of 780 seen in 2014 and the low of 608 seen in 2012.

The lowest rated state is North Carolina with a rating of 540 as hot and dry weather here has pummeled that state's corn crop with the week 23 rating was far higher at 742.

Texas is the second worst rated at 544, but that state was already suffering a month ago with a week 23 rating of 576 but note that two other states, which are Kentucky and Tennessee, have also seen corn ratings tumble over the past four weeks.

The highest rated crop is in Iowa with a week 27 rating of 788 though down from an even higher 806 rating a month ago with the Dakotas and Wisconsin also showing rather high ratings.

Just 4 of the top 18 producing states have seen any improvement in crop conditions over the past month and in all cases the increase in crop ratings is very modest.

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