Corn and soybean planting is running roughly 30 percentage points behind normal in a cold and rainy spring, said the weekly Crop Progress report on Monday. “Delayed planting has set the stage for potential corn yield reductions at the national level,” but not guaranteed them, wrote economist David Widmar in a blog about the implications of one of the five slowest corn planting seasons on record.
Some 49 percent of corn and 19 percent of soybeans were planted nationwide by the start of this week, compared to the five-year average of 80 percent for corn and 47 percent for soybeans, according to the USDA. In much of the Midwest, farmers were limited to less than four days of fieldwork last week because of rain and saturated fields.
“Weather delays have been more painful for corn than soybeans,” wrote Widmar at the Agricultural Economic Insights blog. Summer weather has a bigger role in determining yields than does late planting, he said. Production could decline if growers decide against planting corn because it’s too late to get high yields. In the next week or two, growers will face so-called final planting dates that allow them to file for a prevented-planting indemnity. If they decide not to seek an insurance payments, farmers can sow corn after the final planting date but the coverage level drops steadily as the season advances.
Corn is the most widely planted crop in the United States. The USDA has projected a crop of 15 billion bushels this year, the second-largest on record. Economist Scott Irwin of the University of Illinois says output could be 1 billion bushels lower due to lower yields on later-planted corn and likely decisions by farmers to seek a prevent-planting payment or switch to another crop from corn.