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U.S. Planting Progress and Crop Conditions
11 Apr 07
While it is early in the season, the commodity markets are on edge and looking for any potential problems with the 2007 crops, particularly corn and wheat.
The winter was a mixed bag, as it started off unseasonably mild and concluded much colder than average. Over the past week, the pattern has persisted, as snow delayed the opening of baseball for teams in Cleveland, Ohio. Despite the less-than-favorable weather in some parts of the country, the corn planting pace was able to nearly reach the average level: coming in at 3% complete compared with 4% on average. The 3% level was accomplished by above-average progress in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and below-average progress in the Corn Belt states. Missouri is the only Corn Belt state that made any progress planting.The market is very nervous about the huge projected increase in corn area and farmers’ ability to get it in the ground and cared for. At this point, the season is very young and we must remember how over capitalized most of our farms are in planting equipment. In past seasons, we have seen dramatic increases in planting progress occur in just a week or two. One real concern of the market is the challenge with getting anhydrous nitrogen knifed in prior to planting versus a switch to an alternative such as urea or UAN. These two products are expensive and are expected to be in tight supply. National Planting Progress | | | | | 4/1/2007 | 4/8/2007 | 4/8/2006 | 2002-2006 Avg. | | Percent Planted | Corn | NA | 3 | 3 | 4 | Cotton | NA | 7 | 7 | 7 | Rice | 15 | 22 | 18 | 16 | Sorghum | 16 | 17 | 17 | 14 | Spring Wheat | 3 | 4 | 3 | 7 | Barley | 7 | 15 | 5 | 9 | Oats | 29 | 31 | 33 | 38 | Sugarbeets | NA | 11 | 2 | 7 |
The winter wheat condition is dramatically improved from last year's drought that started in Texas and worked its way north to the Dakotas. In fact, the tail end of the drought even took a little off of the Canadian cereal and canola crops. U.S. Winter Wheat Crop Condition, April 8, 2007 | | | | Very Poor | Poor | Fair | Good | Excellent | | Percent | Percent | Percent | Percent | Percent | Current Week | 3 | 7 | 26 | 45 | 19 | Previous Week | 1 | 5 | 23 | 51 | 20 | Previous Year | 14 | 16 | 29 | 35 | 6 |
As of April 8,the crop condition numbers are only reported for winter wheat; but as more crops are planted and emerge, crop conditions values will be reported weekly. With the weekly release of USDA's planting progress and crop condition numbers, Global Insight will be updating its data and posting the data and graphic representation to its Web page. Clients should set their e-mail notification “on” for this report. The report is in the form of an ".xls" file and is located in the U.S. Crops Online area within Agriculture. Please call or e-mail Stewart Ramsey at 610 - 490 - 2523 or stewart.ramsey@globalinsight.com if you have problems receiving our reports.
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