Southwest Iowa Crop Conditions

Southwest of Storm Lake

Counties of: Woodbury, Ida, Sac, Monona, Crawford, Harrison, Shelby

October 1, 2018

Past Weeks Rainfall: More than plentiful

Soil Moisture: Full topsoil, subsoil more than adequate

Temperature: Highs in the 50’s to 70’s, lows in the 40’s and 50’s

Crop Progress: Some harvest is underway but too many days have been wet for much progress.

Corn

Crop Stage: Corn moisture ranges from mid-20’s to upper teens. Dry-down has stalled with cool, damp conditions. Corn stalk quality is a problem in many fields and should be watched closely. Iowa’s overall corn harvest is at 6% complete as of this afternoon. Of course, more of that is in the southern half of the state.

Yield Potential: Early yield reports are good. Some fields are better than last year but with some poorer ones.

Soybean

Crop Stage: Some fields are harvested. State-wide is reported to be 14% done as of this Monday afternoon. Need some dry days to move ahead.

Yield Potential: Early yield reports are quite good in most fields. Depends a lot of whether or not excessive moisture was a problem.

Corn Market

Current Prices: $3.18/bu

Fall Prices: $3.45 /bu

Past Weeks Trend: Higher

Soybean Market

Current Prices: $7.50/bu

Fall Prices: $8.33/bu

Past Weeks Trend: Higher

Comments:

Dennis Reyman AFM, ARA

Yesterday’s announcement of a trade deal with Canada provided the markets with a good price boost today. Corn was 9.5 cents higher and beans up 12 cents. An even better sign is that some elevators narrowed basis by up to 9 cents as well, providing an 18-cent gain in cash price from Friday. Bean basis remains stuck at more than $1per bushel under Chicago. The average bean basis over the past three years has been about 75 cents per bushel.

Regarding beans and China, it has become common knowledge that American soybeans are traveling to China through alternate channels, such as Argentina.Chinese soybean usage will not decline much, it’s just that direct shipments from the
US to China have been cut way down. On the plus side, Taiwan made a substantial purchase of soybeans last week

Crop Update Achives

Please click on the links on the right to view the past pdf’s of our Southwest Crop Conditions reports.