Fundamentally Speaking

Earlier this week, USDA surprisingly lowered soybean crop conditions for week 27 of the calendar year (which corresponds to the second week of July) to 62% good or excellent vs 63% last week.

This ran counter to trade expectations of a 1% to 2% improvement in the top two rating categories given good amounts of rain that fell in key soybean producing areas last week.

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.

Similar to what we did with corn in a recent post, this graph shows the week 27 soybean ratings for the top 18 producing states and the U.S. for this year along with last year and the average, worst and best week 27 ratings for the time period 2000-2022.

The week 27 U.S. rating this year is 722 which is above last year's 710 and just below the 2000-2022 average of 724 with the high of 762 seen in 2014 and the low of 618 seen in 2012 which was the situation also for corn.

The lowest rated state is Kentucky at 592 and that is the largest negative difference vs. the year ago rating of all 18 states and KY's current rating is also the lowest negative deviation from the 2000-2022 average at down 20.9%.

TN is second lowest rated state and also has second largest drop from year ago and the 22-year average followed up by NC.

We should note that the two Eastern Corn Belt states OH and IN are also not doing well in terms of absolute 2022 rating and how it compares with the year ago figure and each states respective week 27 average.

On the opposite side of the ledger, Louisiana not only is the highest rated of all states at 796 it is that states highest week 27 rating since at least 2000 and 12.2% above its average.

Wisconsin also has a good rating at 784 but beyond that most states are close to their average, though we should note that both North and South Dakota are seeing crop ratings this year far above the drought stressed levels of a year ago.

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