Fundamentally Speaking

Joel Karlin
DTN Contributing Analyst

Do not know if late September rains have really helped the crop or whether harvest reports showing yields coming in well above expectations are the reason, but the latest soybean crop condition report showed the U.S. 2013 ratings up 3% in the combined good to excellent categories.

This brings the combined total up to 53% and using our usual rating system where we weight the crop based on the percent in each category and assign that category a factor of 2 for VP, 4 for P, 6 for F, 8 for G, and 10 for EX and then sum the results show a number of 688.

This is 100 points higher than the end of September rating a year ago and the highest for this time of year in three seasons.

The accompanying graphic shows a scatterplot of end of September U.S. soybean crop conditions and the percent that final yields deviated from trend.

The high R squared indicates that these crop ratings explain about 77% of the variability in percent of final yield deviation.

Plugging the 688 into the equation indicates a 2013 prospective soybean yield 0.66% above trend and with the 2013 trend estimated at 43.6 bushels per acre (bpa) this works out to a yield of 43.9 bpa.

The USDA is currently using a yield of 41.2 bpa so they have quite a ways to reach this target.

Note, however that with the 2012 national soybean yield hiked by 0.3 bpa to 39.6 bpa this represents a 4.3 bpa increase in yield from the September to final crop report, the largest increase for this time span ever recorded.

Late season rains last year are credited with this huge upward revision in yields and this year’s rainfall in September, especially the latter half of the month has proved to be quite beneficial to the large amount of soybean plants that are still green.

(KA)