Weather Is King Of The Hill When It Comes to #Plant18
4/21/18 Roundtable 1
Corn planting progress in the U.S. are nine points behind the five-year average of 14 percent, according to the USDA’s latest crop progress report.
As of Monday when the report was released, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wisconsin haven’t began planting.
Beginning the planting season is a struggle for these eight states as cold, snowy weather have plagued many areas.
According to Bob Utterback, founder of Utterback Marketing Services, Inc., the 39thlatitude is the unofficial line of where crops have been planted: anything above Terre Haute, Indiana hasn’t been planted, and below it, some crops have been planted and emerged.
“The end of April, first of May will be a more bullish time period,” he said on U.S. Farm Report.
With the small amount of acres that have been planted, the market hasn’t reacted to this news yet. Brian Basting, commodity research analyst with Advance Trading, Inc., says there are two factors on why prices haven’t reflected the progress.
“Number one is the size of today’s equipment—how many acres a producer can plant in a very short period of time is something the markets are well aware of,” he said. “Second is probably taking a bit of the weather premium out of the market is the performance of these yields.”
Hear Basting and Utterback discuss the sorghum situation between the U.S. and China on U.S. Farm Report above.
