(Businessweek) – Corn and soybean yields across the eastern third and north central fields in Iowa, the biggest U.S. grower, will be below the prior five-year averages because of excessive rain during planting, a crop tour showed.
Corn yields measured in 10 fields from Clinton to Algona, a region that produced 38 percent of the state’s grain last year, averaged 169.7 bushels an acre, inspections from the 30th annual Doane Advisory Services Co. crop tour showed. That’s 8.6 percent below the average of 185.7 bushels from 2007 to 2011. Soybean yields averaged 44.9 bushels an acre in the same area that represented 31 percent of the crop, down 7.8 percent from the average in the five years ended 2011, according to the data.
“There are just a lot of poor looking crops in Iowa,”said Bill Nelson, a senior economist from Doane, based in St. Louis. “The crops are short, ragged, immature and there are a lot of empty holes in fields where flooding wiped out plants. It will be a below-average year in north central Iowa.”
Corn tumbled to a 33-month low yesterday in Chicago and soybeans dropped the most since July 12 on speculation that rain and cool weather will aid crops in the Midwest after the worst drought since the 1930s cut yields last year. The declines may reduce food prices and costs for producers of livestock feed and ethanol. U.S. farmers will harvest record 13.95 billion bushels of corn and 3.42 billion bushels of soybeans, the Department of Agriculture estimates.
Last year, the tour gauged 114 bushels an acre of corn and 37.5 bushels of soybeans on average in the region.
Iowa Flowering
About 35 percent of Iowa’s corn was beginning to reproduce as of July 21, less than half of the prior five-year average, the USDA said in a report this week. Soybeans were beginning to flower on 36 percent of the state as of July 21, down from 70 percent on average from 2008 to 2012, USDA data showed.
Corn and soybean crop conditions improved as the Doane crop tour moved into south central and southwestern Minnesota, the biggest grower of corn after Iowa. Plant populations were high and crop development more consistent across the region, Marty Foreman, a senior economist with Doane, said in an interview in Worthington, Minnesota.
Corn yields measured in the southwestern third of the state averaged 186.8 bushels an acre, up from 157.8 last year and 0.6 percent less than the average collected from 2009 to 2011.
“It is clear from field observations that farmers are boosting the plant populations to improve yields,” Foreman said.“The yield potential in this region of Minnesota is average to above-average with the best fields exceeding 200 bushels.”
The U.S. is the world’s largest grower of corn and soybeans. The government will release its first field-based estimates of corn and soybean production on Aug. 12.
