Fundamentally Speaking

This week, USDA indicated that 68% of the nation's soybean crop was in good or excellent condition, unchanged from the prior week and vs. 55% a year ago.

Using our usual ratings system (where 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 plots the week 28 (second week in July) soybean crop ratings for the top 18 states and the U.S. with the highest and lowest ratings since 2000 on the left-hand axis along with the week 28 2023 and 2024 ratings.

Reported on the right-hand axis is this year's week 28 ranking from the period 2000-2024 with 1 the highest rating and 25 the lowest.

Given the more favorable ratings this year than last it is no surprise that there are just four states that have lower soybean crop ratings than a year ago which is very similar to the same study we did earlier this month using week 27 data for corn where just CO, TN, TX and most prominently North Carolina had ratings below year ago levels.

It is no surprise that both TN and especially NC are two of the four states that have lower ratings with NC again having the lowest 2024 rating of all states at 576, which is its lowest rating since 2000, similar to what was seen in corn.

Mississippi and Minnesota also have current soybean crop conditions below year ago levels.

On the other hand, many states are doing far better with AR having its best crop rating since 2000 while NE, like corn, has the best of all 18 top states.

MO showing a huge turnaround with its second highest rating since 2000 and the biggest jump in ratings relative to 2023 while Kansas also has its second highest rating since 2000.

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