Plains

Crop farmers are seeing much lower incomes this year, down by an average 25 percent in the Plains, according to agricultural bankers in the Farm Belt.

Three states in the Great Plains - Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma - account for nearly half of crop insurance indemnities paid so far this year, say USDA data.

Unemployment rates in the Plains state are lower than the U.S. average during the continued slow recovery from recession, says the Daily Yonder, which summarizes a USDA report on the matter.

The two biggest agricultural cooperatives in the country are based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, but there's no question who is No 1. It's CHS, a grain handler, farm supplier and energy producer, best known in the Plains and upper Midwest.

U.S. growers will harvest a record 2.5 billion pounds of canola this season, thanks to above-average yields and near-record plantings, says USDA in its Oil Crops Outlook report.

In Brentwood, a "para-urban" community in Contra Costa County on the eastern outskirts of San Francisco, an amalgam of groups combines to keep 20,000 acres of farmland in production and out of subdivisions, office parks and strip malls, says Kristina Johnson at Civil Eats.

The soybean stockpile was a bare-bones 92 million bushels at the start of this month, less than a week-and-a-half supply with the new crop still reaching maturity, said the quarterly Grain Stocks report.

The oil boom in the northern Plains "is creating a crisis for farmers whose grain shipments have been help up by a vast new movement of oil by rail," said the New York Times.

Cropland values are steady or starting to erode while ranch and pasture land is rising in value, say agricultural bankers in the Midwest and central Plains.

Widespread and locally heavy rain storms in the central Plains and Midwest capped four weeks of an easing in the extent and severity of drought across the nation, said the Drought Monitor.

Despite a late, wet and chilly planting season, the U.S. corn crop is in prime condition. "U.S. crop conditions in the most recent Crop Progress report are the best in four years for the aggregated 18 reported states...

The U.S. winter wheat crop will be the smallest in eight years due to drought in the central and southern Plains, the government said, estimating a harvest of 1.38 billion bushels, 2 percent less than it forecast in May and 10 percent smaller than 2013.

The U.S. soybean stockpile is expected to shrivel to its smallest size in 10 years - less than a two-week supply - by late summer ahead of a record-large harvest that will saturate supplies and sharply pull down prices for the oilseed, according to trade expectations for the crop report today.

"California's worsening drought reached a new, ominous milestone this week just as the typical dry season begins for much of the state," says The Weather Channel.

The National Weather Service forecasts more precipitation than usual in the Midwest, the Plains and the Pacific Northwest for late April, which could delay spring planting but relieve dry conditions in the western Corn Belt and the central and southern Plains.

Lawmakers from the Plains and Midwest filed companion bills in the House and Senate to discourage farmers from converting native sod into cropland nationwide by closing a crop insurance loophole. The legislation would require a reduction of crop-insurance subsidies for four years before producers could qualify for them.