Indiana farmers saw their concerns about hot, dry weather hurting corn production alleviated this month, which is great because they did not plant as much as they had planned.
U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in March farmers in the state planned to plant 5.8 million acres of corn this year, and an updated acreage report it released June 30 showed they ended up planting 5.4 million acres of the crop, about 7% less than expected.
With the state’s other major field crop, the USDA’s March Prospective Plantings report showed Indiana farmers planning to plant 5.4 million acres of soybeans, and the update showed they planted more — 5.7 million acres.
To provide national context for what happened in Indiana, Jim Mintert, director of Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture, said in a mid-July agricultural outlook webcast that U.S. farmers had expected to plant 97 million acres of corn but instead planted about 92 million acres of the crop.
At 92 million acres, “that still leaves us up 2.3 million acres compared to a year ago, but it’s still a bit of a surprise and kind of the biggest single change I think that we’ve seen over these last few weeks,” he said.
“The USDA is still using their trend yield estimates for the crop yield this year, and they’re at about 178.5 bushels per acre,” he said.
“That would be essentially a record high yield if we actually hit that trend, and so you put that acreage number together along with the yield estimate and we’re looking at potential for a pretty big corn crop.”
The USDA is sticking with trend yield estimates for corn because it is off to a better start than many farmers thought they were going to see for the first half of the summer.
“We’ve had a switch in terms of expectations here recently. A week ago, all the talk was about dry weather and hot weather,” Mintert said.
“In the interim, we’ve gotten some rain, not everywhere, but in many locations across the corn belt,” he said. “And the temperature forecast has changed appreciably.
“Temperatures here in the Eastern Corn Belt now are forecast to largely be in the upper 80s and to maybe cross over the 90 mark but be mostly in the upper 80s. And that’s some pretty good corn growing weather.”
A weekly Crop Progress report for Indiana released July 20 by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service showed moisture levels were short for 35% of the state’s topsoil, adequate for 54%, and very short for 8%, while 3% had surplus moisture.
In northeast Indiana, weather data collection points used by the service showed since April 1 precipitation was 4.4 inches below normal in Huntington, 1.8 inches below in Angola and less than half an inch below in Decatur.
During the week ended July 19, it rained two days for a total of 1.75 inches in Angola, three days for about half an inch in Huntington and two days for about a third of an inch in Decatur.
The statewide average precipitation was a little less than two-thirds of an inch and there were almost six days of weather suitable for field work that week.
“Sporadic rain events and warm temperatures aided crop development throughout the state,” the report said.
“The moderate precipitation and warm summer temperatures were conducive to crop development, as the percent of corn silking increased significantly, moving ahead of the five-year average,” it said.
About 60% of the state’s corn crop had silked.
“The percent of soybeans blooming also remained ahead of the five-year average. Both corn and soybean conditions remained stable from the previous week,” the report said.
With only 12% of its corn and 11% of its soybeans in poor or very poor shape, the report showed 79% of Indiana’s corn and 80% of its soybeans in good or fair condition, and 9% of both crops in excellent condition.
Reduced production of ethanol fuel that resulted from pandemic precautions cutting into travel helped change the relative profitability picture of corn versus soybeans, but farmers across the country still did not put that many more acres into beans than they had planned.
The USDA’s March Prospective Plantings report showed U.S. farmers planning to plant 83.5 million acres of soybeans, and the department’s late June update showed they planted 83.8 million acres.
For soybeans, “the two states that probably increased the most from the planting intentions were Kansas — Kansas is looking at record soybean acreage — but also Indiana,” Michael Langemeier, associate director of the Center for Commercial Agriculture, said in the webcast.
“For Indiana, there was almost a complete switch of going from corn to soybeans of about 300,000 acres,” he said.
“So, there was some switching in some states and there weren’t a lot of states where soybeans were down necessarily, with the exception of North Dakota. But the increases weren’t as big as we thought they were going to be.”
The USDA stuck with the trend yield of 50 bushels per acre for its soybean production projections, which was not quite up to the record yield of 52 bushels per acre farmers saw in 2016.
“Soybean yields are going to be determined about a month from now or maybe six weeks from now,” Mintert said.
“The critical period is really going to be more in the month of August, but it’s certainly off to a good start.”
July 24, 2020 at 11:00AM
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