Wet Weather Ends in Argentina, Harvest Set to Continue

The price of soybeans have jumped in Chicago in part because of really wet weather in Argentina. That’s a done deal now says meteorologist Mark Russo of Riskpulse out of Chicago, Illinois.

Mark Russo follows agricultural growing conditions around the planet for Riskpulse. He made his comments during the Monday edition of the Closing Market Report from the University of Illinois, online at WILLAg.org.

Illinois Planting Date Studies for Corn & Soybean

It looks like more rain is coming to the corn belt. That'll concern farmers hoping to plant this year's crop. However, they've got time says University of Illinois Extension Agronomist Emerson Nafziger.

There's not huge losses of yield as long as you can get corn planted by the second week of May - Emerson Nafziger, University of Illinois 

The fact is Nafziger would rather wait than put a crop in the ground under not so great soil conditions, "I think it is easy at this time of year to do more harm than good by planting it when you say, " well I don't think this soil is quite ready, but I think we'll have to get started and go." And our goal is to get it planted when it is fit, and as soon as we can when it is fit".

Corn planting date response over 35 Illinois site-years, 2007-2015. Yields are expressed as a percentage of the yield produced by the highest-yielding date at that site.

Nafziger's planting date studies across the state of Illinois over the last nine years put the optimum planting date for corn at April 17th. Planting dates from April 5 to April 25 maximize corn yield within a two bushel range. Corn planted April 30th loses two bushels off the top, and a delay to May 10th puts the expected loss at 8 bushels to the acre.
 

It's clear, by the University of Illinois planting date studies, that soybeans sown in April can do well. This is the case even in southern Illinois, although it's really hard to get a good early stand. Yields in the top two-thirds of the state respond the same way to earlier planting dates. The earliest dates, starting around the 10th of April, have the highest yields and things fall off as time passes, however, Nafziger is a bit cautious about planting so very early. He simply states to start when field conditions are good to go.

Our work is showing the best time to plant soybeans is the last week of April to the first two weeks of May. - Emerson Nafziger, University of Illinois 

The average maximum yield for soybeans over the 23 site years of the study, gathered from 2010-2015, is 67 bushels to the acre. There is a two-and-a-half bushel decline from April 10 to April 30th, four bushels by May 10th, seven bushels for a delay to May 20th, 11 bushels to the end of the month, 14 by the 10th of June, and 19 by the 20th.

Soybean planting date response over 23 trials in central and northern Illinois, 2010-2015. Yields are expressed as a percentage of the yield of the highest-yielding date within each trial.

Interestingly, comments Nafziger, the usual halfway point for soybean planting in Illinois is about May 20th. That is, he says, only because of the wet conditions that keep farmers out of the field. Given all of this, the U of I agronomist says he wouldn't wait after planting corn to start planting soybeans, "We've seen some sizable yield losses with soybeans by planting too early, but by too early I mean the first half of April".

There are two ways to get lower yields from planting soybeans too early. First, there are drought years like 2012. When planting late in 2012 you picked up moisture later in the season to get better yields. In-other-words, too much dry weather during flowering can really do a number of the crop. The other is if it gets really cool early after soybeans have emerged. It can actually keep them physiologically below their maximum yield says Nafziger.

Pragmatically speaking, Emerson Nafziger says as long as soil conditions are good, he'd begin planting soybeans as soon as corn planting is completed and, after some momentary consideration, says he'd move to a soybean field if soil conditions in the next corn field weren't up to par.

Is Fall-Applied Nitrogen Still Present

Corn growers are concerned about the amount of fall-applied nitrogen that might have been lost through the winter and how this might change nitrogen management this spring.

The first question that needs to be asked on nitrogen management is simple says University of Illinois Extension Agronomist Emerson Nafziger. You need to know how much nitrogen the crop will need, then how much is naturally available, and finally, how much should be applied.

“Our best estimate, and this is a bit of a floppy number, is the crop will take up about a pound of nitrogen for each bushel it produces. About two-thirds of that is going to be in the grain and removed by harvest of the crop. The other third will be in the residue. Some of this will get back into the soil, some won’t”, says Emerson Nafziger.

The amount of nitrogen needed then is about 1 pound for every bushel expected. If the expected yield is 200 bushels to the acre, then it will need 200 pounds of nitrogen.

Pay attention to this part.

Nafziger wrote in an article for the U of I’s pest management bulletin on April 18th that the more productive soils in Illinois contain about 3.5% organic matter. A rule of thumb calculation, read it online in The Bulletin, puts the N from this organic matter at 140 pounds. In some years this is apparently all available to the crop, and in others it isn’t.

The N Rate Calculator, which you may find online, tries to average out the low and high organic N years. N added as fertilizer for corn following soybeans in southern and central Illinois should be about 170 pounds, 20 pounds less in northern Illinois.

As for nitrogen loss, Nafziger has this to say in The Bulletin as it relates to his recent nitrogen treatment studies, “ these results show both the risk of N loss and the benefit from delaying some of the N or using inhibitors may be a little less than we’ve thought. Getting data from another year or two will help paint the picture more fully, but these results give some reason to be confident that the N management systems in common use all have good potential to provide the crop with N. Adding costs by changing N management, for example by making another trip over the field to apply late N, may not provide a positive return compared to applying all of the N in one or two earlier trips.”

Nafziger says the corn crop takes up most of its nitrogen in June.

Soybeans, the Switch is On

Ever since USDA released the Prospective Plantings report March 31st, many have been wondering if farmers will decide to switch a few corn acres to soybeans. The higher price of that crop seems to make this more likely.



Farmers told USDA in March they would plant about 82.2 million acres of soybeans this season. This is one percent less than last year, and a million acres or so less than the trade had really expected. Prices have rallied since then and University of Illinois Agricultural Economist Darrel Good thinks that million acres could be back in play, but that it won’t really change much, "I tend to think there will be some modest switching given the price reaction we’ve had since that report was released. Soybeans are considerably stronger than when the survey was done and corn prices are steady to weaker than when farmers were surveyed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see up to a million acres, perhaps, move away from corn to soybeans or perhaps some other crops. Again, a million acres doesn’t alter the supply expectation very much".

However, very much, can result in a pretty good rally. Darrel Good and colleague Scott Irwin at ILLINOIS put together a supply and demand table for this year. They added 800,000 planted acres to soybeans, putting the figure at 83 million even. The two project this could result in a 267 million bushel ending stocks number with an average cash price of $9.45 a bushel for the year. USDA season’s average cash price for soybeans for the 2015 crop is $8.75. It’s important to note that while the ILLINOIS projection uses a larger planted acreage figure, it also includes a much lower average yield. Good says there are two reasons for this.

Quote Summary - Our calculated trend yields for both corn and soybeans would be a little less the USDA. So, we start a little lower than they start. And then we monitor the El Niño episode that tends to be fading pretty quickly right now. This suggests to us an elevated risk of below trend yields this year. We start with a lower trend yield on corn, 166.2, and I would want to fade that three or four bushels in my expectations right now. We’d start at 45.2 bushels on soybeans and fade that bushel or so based on the El Niño.

Actually, the projection is down 1.2 bushels to the acre for a projected nationwide average yield of 44.

University of Illinois 16/17 Soybean Balance Sheet Projection - April 13, 2016

USDA will release its first projection of the current growing season supply and demand tables May 10th. Those numbers most assuredly will not yet update acreage, nor are they likely to include a deviation from trend line based on summer weather predictions.