We’re officially starting the Farms.com Risk Management 2015 U.S. Crop Tour in the state of Kansas. It’s day 5 – June 30th and we’re near Melvern, Kansas and we’re standing in front of a cornfield here but before I talk about that, just a little bit of an update on Kansas. Kansas tends to grow about 9.6 million soft red winter wheat – that’s their largest crop. They tend to grow about 4 million corn, about 4.05 million beans, so it’s a little bit of a smaller state when it comes to corn and beans. In the last two weeks, we’ve seen crop conditions deteriorate and drop sharply in a lot of those wet states like Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri. In the month of June, this state hasn’t gotten as much rain as some of those other states. They did get a lot of moisture in May and it did delay some beans, don’t get me wrong, we saw some beans that were just barely planted maybe up to a two leaf stage, but the corn was planted early April and this is some of the most mature corn we’ve seen because we’re seeing the silks on the corn that we really haven’t seen in other states. So, with Kansas, if they can get the rain next couple months, I think they have a really good crop in the making but it’s a hit and miss. If they don’t get the rain, you’re going to shave some of the top end on yield.
*We ask the owner about one of the ears from this field…*
Farmer: “18 rows around this one here, it’s a good ear right now, looks good and it should fill out fine as long as we get the rain here in the next week or two to help fill it, we’ll be alright. It was planted about 26,000 seeds on this, per acre.”
“How many rows did you say you’ve got?”
Farmer: “18 on this one. Hopefully all 150+ we hope, but like we say, it depends on July and August moisture for us. We have to get the rain.”
We’re in northeast Kansas, travelling west on 36 and 75. We’ve come up to this portion of the state because it was hit with a lot of moisture again. We talk about that moisture issue this year. We’ve talked to a local farmer with these beans here. He’s saying these are some of the best beans he has but he only has 2/3 of his beans planted thus far and these beans are looking pretty decent. We’ve got some flowering going on here. Kansas has had some issue with moisture as well. It’s pretty hot today – 91 degrees. Finally getting some heat, but through the month of May, there was some moisture issues.
We’re travelling west on highway 36. We’re near Marysville, Kansas. We’re standing in front of another corn field that looks planted a little bit later, probably a week or two away from pollination. As we’ve travelled west, the state of Kansas has had some issues with moisture again. It seems to have impacted more the beans. The beans, again, are short. They should be knee high, they were planted late, and they’re just barely out of the ground.
We’re still west on 36 in Kansas near Marysville, looking at a soybean field. This seems to be a common theme here in 2015 – just late planted, two leaf stage. This should be knee high, so well behind the growth stage, and I can see from the field that there was some moisture issue here probably in the month of May.
We just crossed into the border of Nebraska and so we’re going to conclude our tour state video of Kansas. It’s been a wet one again in Kansas, as it was in many other states. In the month of May, in fact, it was so wet that the farmers only had 4 days of planting and it has improved in the month of June – it’s gotten drier, so farmers have been able to catch up, but there’s still a lot of beans left to plant. In fact, USDA yesterday in their WASDE report for June stated that they had to do a resurvey for the August WASDE report. There’s four states – Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. In Kansas there’s 530,000 acres of beans left to be planted, 2.1 million in Missouri, and 693,000 in Illinois. Crop conditions have improved on corn here in the last week. This corn again, looking like it was stressed by moisture, planted late and it’s behind. But crop conditions in this state were similar to Missouri so if I was to rank the state of Kansas, probably equal to Missouri, maybe a little bit ahead of Ohio simply because Ohio has had so much flooding.
Once again, I want to thank our sponsors: Tasco Dome, Pride Seeds, Penta Tillage and South West Ag Partners.