Welcome to Day 3 of the 2016 U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour, my name is Moe Agostino, Chief Commodity Strategist with Farms.com Risk Management. We are traveling north on Hwy 130 - just below Newton, Illinois.
Just before I get to some of my observations, just some quick facts about the state of Illinois. Corn good to excellent is at 72% very poor to poor 6%. That's just slightly below the national average. The corn yield in 2015 was 175, the record was 200 in 2014. Corn acres at 12.1, it's only second to Iowa at 13 and change. So corn acres this year up 3% vs last year. For Soy, Illinois is the largest grower of soy at close to almost 10 million. Iowa comes in as a close second - represents about 12.1% of the total acres in the U.S. We are up a little bit vs 2015. Yield is at 56, the record is 56. So 2014 & 2015 were very good years for soy in the state of Illinois. Wheat, we are 38% harvested, total acres again it is small. 0.56 million acres up 4% vs 15%. Yield tends to average around 65, down 2 bushels per acre from 2014.
Did you know that all the yearly corn production for Illinois, if you put that into a train of boxcars it would go from Illinois to Hong Kong. So that's how much corn is in this state.
Now you are looking at another corn field here, some consistency from state to state. Late planted crops - this is short for the time of the year, it should be at least.. well you know if the weather improves here maybe they do get some rain, this can grow fairly quickly but I'm just disappointed with the size. Not seeing any disease pressure. Very healthy, looking very green. Stage, 1 out of 5, it is a 1. Compared to my past few years in the state of Illinois this is not on the verge of a record crop at this stage. Still early, still big growing season ahead of us. Now we are going to go across and look at some soybeans.
[Video clips of Illinois field conditions]
So we are still on Hwy 130, we are across from that corn field just below Newton. You can see how small this crop is, it was probably late planted. Some of them are just barely coming out of the ground. You know, it's behind. If it was planted late, it's subject to lower yields. But soybeans are a late August crop so lots of time and if the weather is ok, it can still yield pretty good. In 2012, we baked that soybean crop for months and months and months and then we finally had some late August rains and it produced a good crop. We will continue with our tour in Illinois. We are going to go further north. We are going to start meeting some experts in this state as well as some farmers.
[Video clips of Illinois field conditions]
We are now travelling east, kind of north east, on Hwy 136 near Emden, Illinois. The further north we go into Illinois, we are starting to finally see what crops really should be looking like. This is a really good corn field here. Nice and lush green, got some tassels, got some ears growing, this is 30 inch spaces. And then in the background we have some beans. Again, blooming beans, nice canopy there. Nice sunny day. It's hot again - 90 degrees. I'm getting a little concerned over the next 2 weeks, this area has complained a lot about rolling corn. We continue to move towards Macomb County up to Roseville - that's the furthest north we will get. We will continue to show you what the corn looks like. It has been a lot better than the southern part of the states, either Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio.
[Video clips of Illinois field conditions]
We are traveling south on Hwy 67, we are near Carrollton, Illinois and we are going to end our tour here as we travel south towards St Louis, Missouri. We have had a couple of days and a lot of observations - key observations - spoke to a lot of farmers and industry experts in this state. This is number 2 state out of the big 'I' states - Iowa of course the number one state. You know, the yield last year was 175, the record yield was 2014 at 200.
Based on my observations, this crop had an early start. It is well ahead of the crops we saw in Ohio & Indiana and I think this crop is above average. We saw a lot of tasseled corn, more than we ever saw in Ohio or Indiana and I think we are going to have to rate this crop at least an 8.5-9. I think we are going to have to rate the beans as well. The beans are a lot taller - I have seen better beans though - in 2014 & 2015. They have had some issues but the beans are a resilient crop and it's an august crop so it's still come time to come through. The corn however, there are still farmers complaining about a lack of moisture. We saw some issues like burning up, there is some nitrogen loss - you aren't seeing it here, well you are seeing it a little bit here, but not to the extent we saw in New Salem, Illinois. A lot of that corn was planted end of March, early April. You are going to need a drink soon. The next 2-3 weeks is critical. We are either going to have some of this corn like this - probably 250 - but if it doesn't get a drink soon it's probably down 200. If you don't finish strong and don't get some moisture in August, you can be down to 150. So, really the next 2-3 weeks is critical. We have an above average corn & soybean crop in Illinois.