We are starting our tour in the state of Missouri, it is day 5 - June 29th. My name is Moe Agostino, Chief Commodity Strategist with Farms.com Risk Management. This is pretty good corn here. We are in Jerico Springs Missouri. It is typically around the 130 average in a good year. But there have been years where you can produce more than that. This was planted I believe around end of March, middle of March. It is some of the most mature corn. Southern Missouri should be pretty mature and ahead of most of the corn we have seen thus far. You can see the silks and nice ears here. It's a little dry but there is some rain in the forecast over the next 5 - 10 days. They are talking about 5 inches of rain. That would definitely help this crop and continue to help it finish.
So just a couple of introductions on Missouri - we'll start off with corn. They planted about 3.6 million acres. The record yield here is 186 in 2014. In 2015 it was 142. Acres are going to be up about 11% vs last year. The crop conditions run at 66% good to excellent, by comparison the national average is 75%. 66% is still pretty high. For soys, we have 5.5 million acres. Up 21% in 2016 vs 2015. The record yield was 46.5 in 2014, the average in 2015 was 40.5. Wheat, Missouri is again one of the small states. 0.69 million acres, down 9% vs 2015. They are about half harvested at this point. A lot of guys here are harvesting their wheat then doing a cover crop. They are following with soybeans and that seems to be working for them. The average yield on wheat is about 53 bushels per acre; that is down 5 vs 2014. And just one quick note: did you know that Missouri is ranked number 2 in the number of farms in the U.S.?
[Video clips of Missouri field conditions]
We are traveling south on Hwy 59 towards Kansas City. We are still in Missouri near Oregon, Missouri and this is typically what you are going to see in Missouri right now. It's lush, it's green. There was a lot of concern that Missouri was one of those dry states but we are not seeing that here folks. They got the corn in fairly early - you can see the tassels and you can see the ears with the silks. Even the beans are looking really good. But, guys are suggesting that they still need some moisture to carry this crop and finish it but, it is looking really good here in Missouri. We thought that we would catch come dry spots - there are, don't get me wrong - but it's not typical for what we are seeing. So we are going to rank Missouri 7.5 to 8. Probably not as strong as what we saw in Illinois but it's pretty close. Even the beans - the beans are looking really good. A lot of them are blooming at this stage in the game. It's day 5, June 29th. We got a little bit of a rain traveling here but it's the 5th day that's been pretty sunny, the temperatures are decent. They are expected to get a lot of moisture in the next 5 days and that is key. So what happens here in the next 2-3 weeks is key. So we are going to rank the state of Missouri above average. I want to thank my sponsors Pride Seeds and Penta Tillage.