Corn

Soybeans

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Crop Stage:

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Current Market:

Comments:

We experienced a very welcome period of cool, wet conditions last week, the first meaningful rainfall in about a month in most locations. While the rain was too late to help the corn, it may help to add size to soybeans in fields that hadn’t progressed as far towards maturity.

Crop conditions are all over the board at this time. Harvest is starting up on both corn and soybeans in fields where light soil types or other factors pushed maturity ahead and the plants are dead. These will be the poorest yields we will see. On heavy soils in areas that caught a little more rain this summer, plants are maturing slower and yield prospects are much better. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cases with both dead and still green plants in the fields, which will make harvest a challenge as waiting for the whole field to be ready will leave the early crops susceptible to field loss. Weather permitting, we will see a lot of both crops harvested in September this year.

It’s not often I can report on a $1.00/bu gain in soybean prices between crop updates, but this week I can, with prices exactly $1.00 higher than my last report in late August. Dry weather in August throughout the Corn Belt finally caught the market’s attention. In addition, export sales to China continues to be very strong. This combination of factors has led to the best soybean price in over a year. The latest USDA report released last Friday pegs national soybean yields at over 51 bu/ac, down a couple of bushels from earlier estimates, and projects season average cash prices for 2020/21 at $9.25/bu, up $0.90 from the prior report.

Corn does not have as bullish an outlook but still moved $0.30/bu higher since late August. National yields are estimated to be a record at
178 bu/ac, but are down over 4 bushel from the prior report, and 2020/21 season average cash price has jumped to $3.50/bu, up $0.40/bu. Like soybeans, corn exports have been quite good, helping to offset lower usage by the ethanol industry.

– Nathan Deters, AFM