Southeast Iowa Crop Conditions

The counties located to the Southeast of Storm Lake are some of the most fortunate in the Northwest 1/4 of Iowa this year. Although spring weather was far from great, there were good enough opportunities to get the corn and some of the soybeans in before the ideal window for planting dates slams shut.

Corn is pretty much all planted and a lot of the crop has emerged with better than expected plant stands. The warm temps toward the end of last week really helped push the corn out of he ground.

USDA released their weekly planting progress update Monday (5-20-19) afternoon estimating that 49% of the corn is planted nationwide. This is a big deal because it is the slowest planting pace on record for this date. History has shown that corn planted after mid-May does not yield as well field planted before then. The interesting part of the unplanted acres is where they are located. Illinois and Indiana are both 60-70% behind normal pace, so the acres that are not planted are not “fringe” acres that are low yielding. We feel fortunate that Iowa is 70% planted at this point with most of the acres left located closer to the Minnesota border.

The markets have finally responded to the slow planting pace by going considerably higher.Corn has gained 45 cents and soybeans have gained 40 cents over the last week.