Fundamentally Speaking

This week the USDA released its second national corn condition report for the 2025 season, which is week 22 or about the first week in June.

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 second U.S. corn rating of each year from 2000 to 2025 on the left-hand axis.

The only exception is the year 2019 when a very wet spring resulted in delayed plantings so the first condition report that year was the 23rd week of the year instead of the last week of May as 50% of the corn crop had not yet emerged as is normally the case.

On the right-hand axis is the percentage of the U.S. corn area in some form of drought D1-D4 as recorded in the U.S. Drought monitor site.

The figure in the yellow boxes is how much the final corn yield of each season deviated from the 25-year trend.

This year's second corn rating is 750, about equal to the 2000-2024 average of 752 and down somewhat from the year ago 770 rating.

We should note that the correlation between week 22 conditions and the percent final yields deviate from the 25-year trend is as low 20% as it is still very early in the season.

Still, it is favorable for yields that there is a good subsoil moisture base heading into the most critical part of the crop's life cycle and in that regard, just 21% of current U.S. corn area is in some form of drought with none in worst categories of D3-extreme or D4-exceptional.

This is however tied for third highest percentage as of first week of June since 2005 but down substantially from the 60% in some form of drought as recently as the beginning of March as May and now into early June rains have been plentiful throughout much of the Corn Belt.

As noted in prior blog posts, U.S. weather has been decent enough the past two seasons where back-to-back record corn yields have occurred but not so outstanding where 2023 or 2024 final yields were above 25-year trend.

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