Southwest Iowa Crop Conditions

The past several weeks have brought continual rounds of rain (heavy, light, thunderstorms, etc) about half the time,
and great growing conditions the other half of the time. Much of Woodbury County received 6-8” in one dousing on
Saturday night, June 14th. Fields that can handle the moisture look great. Fields that lack good drainage, or are
situated in areas where drainage systems are overwhelmed, have suffered considerable crop loss. The hill ground
of Woodbury, Ida, Crawford, and Monona Counties look fantastic although some lower-lying areas show yellowish
corn . Fields with severe erosion problems earlier in the year are mostly masked by a great-looking crop at this
time. Corn height ranges from 6’ to 6”. Beans are mostly 4 to 10”. Yield potential is above average for corn at this
point. It is too soon to make even that basic a prediction for soybeans, but overall there is no reason to believe
potential is less than average. The Missouri River bottom and some of the tributary bottoms have seen
tremendous flooding. Many fields on the Missouri bottoms in Woodbury and Monona County will yield very poorly,
or already have totally lost the crop, due to record rainfall in June which totally backed up drainage systems.
Losses will be much more extensive than with the 2011 river flooding which was confined to areas adjacent to the
river, mostly within 1-2 miles. At least damages with this flooding will not include sand deposits, siltation, and debris
removal.
Corn and soybean prices continue to drop in expectation of a huge crop. This is being written an hour before the
release of USDA’s Stocks and Acreage Report. Supply-demand forces reset themselves based on the June 30th
report and its not uncommon to have limit moves, either up or down, after the report is issued. Local new-crop bids
for October delivery are just under $4.00 as of this writing. Soybeans are about $11.60