Northeast Iowa Crop Conditions

July to date has been on the warm and dry side. A couple of things have been in our favor to this point on keeping crop conditions in the area good. We entered July with a nearly full soil moisture profile. Good quality soils can hold 8-9 inches of water, so as long as the plant can root down to get the moisture, those reserves can help the plant get through dry periods. We had good rooting conditions this spring, with very little saturated soil or compaction early on, so the plants should be fully able to access the subsoil moisture this year. Secondly, although the days have mostly been quite warm to this point we have largely avoided the very hot, oppressively humid nights that stress the corn plant. Corn likes nighttime temperatures in the 60’s. We hope this continues, the forecast is good until the end of this week when it looks like some more serious heat returns.

Soybeans are a little more tolerant of heat now, but it will start to become critical to get some moisture as we near the August pod setting and filling time. The corn market has been up and down. The June 30th USDA acreage report slashed planted acres well below expectation, dropping about 1 billion bushels of production.The market rallied on this along with some weather concerns in early July. While there are certainly dry areas in the Corn Belt, in general crop conditions are near normal for this time of year and weather premium has been taken back out of the market for now.Soybeans have moved higher. The critical weather stage is yet to come for them, and exports have been very good and look to continue barring any major hiccup in Chinese relations.