Market Matters Blog

Snow Snarls Harvest

The television monitors at Reagan National Airport looked like they were bleeding. Two thirds of the inbound flights faced delays related to this year's first big snowstorm, and I crossed my fingers that my flight route through Atlanta would get me home.

Many farmers woke up this morning feeling the same way -- hoping they'd still have time to finish up harvest before the death knell of a snowy winter.

Fortunately, I made it home without a hiccup. It looks like farmers have a pretty good chance of finishing harvest, too.

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Monday's crop progress report shows that corn harvest is 80% complete, a far cry from where it was in 2009 -- the last record corn harvest. In fact, most major corn states are light years ahead of where they were in 2009. Check out the table below comparing the harvest completion percentages for those years.

State 2009 2014
IL 31 87
IN 41 71
IA 34 82
MI 16 34
MN 23 90
NE 30 79
ND 3 73
OH 37 67
SD 18 84
WI 23 50

"Greatest issues this year are in Michigan and Wisconsin -- but even in those states, harvest is more than double its percent progress compared with five years ago," DTN Senior Ag Meteorologist Bryce Anderson said. "And the Minnesota and North Dakota totals are obviously far, far better than back in 2009."

He said the forecast is cold and dry next week, so farmers are still likely to make more progress before winter shuts them down for good. DTN Cash Grains Analyst Mary Kennedy spent some her career in northwestern Wisconsin, and she thinks some corn could be left standing over the winter. But it's also not unusual in that area.

Wisconsin's crop progress report made for some interesting reading. Its headline: Farmers Race Oncoming Snow.

"Farmers were scrambling this week to get fieldwork done before oncoming winter weather. Rain and snow events late in the week interrupted fieldwork and drove up grain moistures in the eastern portions of the state. This precipitation made for slick field conditions and wind reportedly lodged standing corn in some areas. However, conditions across the rest of the state were much drier, allowing good progress on fall fieldwork. With substantial snow and much colder weather in the forecast, reporters were concerned about the amount of corn and soybeans still to be harvested and the amount of manure still to be spread. Several reporters noted farmers working through the night to clear fields while conditions allowed. The corn silage and soybeans harvests were nearing completion, as was winter wheat planting. Grain driers were going full blast across the state but some producers were reportedly still delaying their grain corn harvest until moisture content falls naturally." (You can find the whole report here: http://1.usa.gov/…)

I'm glad I made it home from Monday's USDA lockup, and I hope farmers can say the same about this year's corn harvest.

(AG/CZ)

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