USDA Latest Crop Conditions

Here is a summary: EXCELLENT GOOD 09/14/2014 09/07/2014 09/14/2014 09/07/2014CORN 22 22 52 52SOYBEANS 19 19 53 53As you can see, the crops held steady this week with the share rated Good/Excellent at nearly 3/4 of the entire corn crop and 72% for the bean crop. These are superb numbers. Last Friday, frost issues heading into the weekend propped up both markets and enabled them to shrug off the extremely bearish numbers from USDA in last week’s Supply and Demand report. With the frost damage minimal at best, the conditions index and more importantly at this point, the maturity ratings are going to come back into focus. What a difference a single week can make for maturity. I have been commenting recently about the lag in maturity of the crop with my thesis being that the outstanding growing conditions, ample moisture and mild temperatures, have kept more energy heading into the ears ( kernels) and pods respectively instead of the plants following their more usual process of beginning to shut down. That I believe is going to lead to heavier/larger kernel fill and the same with pod filling ( heavier/larger beans).

This post was published at Trader Dan Norcini on Monday, September 15, 2014.