Posts

Showing posts from June, 2014


Check out the corn and soybean field conditions in this little video from the Gleason Farms in Logan County, Illinois. The corn looks, well, GREAT - and the soybeans are flowering! 


June 30, 2014

USDA released the annual Acreage and quarterly Grain Stocks reports at 11am central time today.




ACREAGE

Corn Planted Acreage Down 4 Percent from 2013
Soybean Acreage Up 11 Percent
All Wheat Acreage Up Less Than 1 Percent
All Cotton Acreage Up 9 Percent

Corn planted area for all purposes in 2014 is estimated at 91.6 million
acres, down 4 percent from last year. This represents the lowest planted
acreage in the United States since 2010; however, this is the fifth largest
corn acreage in the United States since 1944.

Soybean planted area for 2014 is estimated at a record high 84.8 million
acres, up 11 percent from last year. Area for harvest, at 84.1 million acres,
is up 11 percent from 2013 and will be a record high by more than 7.4 million
acres, if realized. Record high planted acreage is estimated in Michigan,
Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South
Dakota, and Wisconsin.


GRAIN STOCKS

Corn Stocks Up 39 Percent from June 2013
Soybean Stocks Down 7 Percent
All Wheat Stocks Down 18 Percent

Corn stocks in all positions on June 1, 2014 totaled 3.85 billion bushels, up
39 percent from June 1, 2013. Of the total stocks, 1.86 billion bushels are
stored on farms, up 48 percent from a year earlier. Off-farm stocks, at
1.99 billion bushels, are up 32 percent from a year ago. The March - May 2014
indicated disappearance is 3.15 billion bushels, compared with 2.63 billion
bushels during the same period last year.

Soybeans stored in all positions on June 1, 2014 totaled 405 million bushels,
down 7 percent from June 1, 2013. On-farm stocks totaled 109 million bushels,
down 36 percent from a year ago. Off-farm stocks, at 296 million bushels, are
up 12 percent from a year ago. Indicated disappearance for the
March - May 2014 quarter totaled 589 million bushels, up 4 percent from the
same period a year earlier.

Old crop all wheat stored in all positions on June 1, 2014 totaled
590 million bushels, down 18 percent from a year ago. On-farm stocks are
estimated at 97.0 million bushels, down 19 percent from last year. Off-farm
stocks, at 493 million bushels, are down 18 percent from a year ago. The
March - May 2014 indicated disappearance is 467 million bushels, down
10 percent from the same period a year earlier.




Here are some other items of interest from the USDA Executive Summary.

The Change in Acreage by Crop (2013 to 2014)



2014 Principal Crops Planted
Acres (000) & Change from Prospective Plantings by state



U.S. Principal Crop Acres





Our website is also a great place to get updates. The address is www.willag.org. Todd's @commodityweek Twitter feed will be posted directly into the site and it will give a quick, if incomplete, review of the figures. The detailed numbers will be posted into the USDA Reports page on our online home.

Finally, thank you very much to all those helping to make our end of the fiscal year fund drive a great success. WILL is a public radio station and your financial support is vital. If you haven't yet, or simply would like to help support our agricultural programs on the station, including this newsletter, please do make a contribution. When you fill out the online forms be sure to write "in support of agriculture" in the comments section.

subscribe to this newsletter

unsubscribe to this newsletter

edit your existing subscription profile

Chris Hurt says Same Pounds of Pork & Same Corn Fed

Friday USDA released the Quarterly Hogs & Pigs report. During an interview late Friday afternoon Purdue Extension Ag Economist Chris Hurt said the figures show, as it relates to the amount of corn consumed by the nation's hog herd, the lower number of animals coming to market now because of PEDv is offset by heavier weights. Essentially, Hurt says feeding fewer pigs to heavier weights consumes about the same amount of corn (he thinks) and produces about the same amount of pork.



You may read Chris Hurt's thoughts on the livestock market once a month in The Weekly Outlook posted to the FarmDocDaily website during the noon hour on Mondays.

USDA June 2014 Grain Stocks & Acreage Reports

Grain Stocks

USDA June Estimate Average Ranges June 2013 March 2014
Corn 3,723 3,046-4,050 2,766 7,006
Soybean 382 334-440 435 992
Wheat 597 561-633 718 1,056

Acreage

USDA June Estimate Average Range March 2014 2013
Corn 91.709 91.00-92.50 91.691 95.365
Soybean 82.213 81.30-84.00 81.493 76.533
All Wheat 55.777 54.80-56.50 55.815 56.156
    Spring 11.937 11.30-12.20 12.009 11.596
    Durum  1.795   1.69- 1.90   1.799   1.470

Wheat Head Scab in SRW Crop


The nation's wheat crop is suffering from too much rainfall. It is causing harvest delays in the hard red winter wheat growing regions of the southwestern United States, and the development of disease issues in the southern Illinois soft red winter wheat crop.

Agronomy Day August 14, 2014

Visit the Agronomy Day Home Page now!

Art on the Roadside

Photographers call the time before sunset the golden hour. The light bends and shimmers across the landscape from a very low angle. It is a beautiful time of day to take pictures. 




You might say the sun paints the planet with golden light.



These photos were taken during my evening walk Sunday June 15, 2014 near my childhood home outside Elkhart, Illinois. They were shot facing the southeast with the sun directly at my back.


Nature does the best job of painting the landscape, however an app called Waterlogue helped me create an interesting artistic view of the art on the roadside.

ILLINOIS' Darrel Good on June WASDE

USDA WASDE Report

Hog Prices Take Big Drop: What Next?

Traders in Chicago have a better handle on a disease in the nation’s hog herd. Lean hog futures have responded by moving lower. Purdue Ag Economist Chris Hurt has more on why the price of pork is on the decline.

Visit a Grain Elevator on a Sunday Afternoon

Some Sunday this summer you should make the drive to Atlanta, Illinois and tour the old grain elevator. It stopped taking in corn long ago and sat unused for years. Then the townsfolk decided, in the mid 1990’s, to refurbish the J. H. Hawes Grain elevator. Today it is a museum on the registry of historical places in the United States. You can learn more on the museum website.
 

The J. H. Hawes Grain Elevator and Musuem is open to visitors from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. every Sunday afternoon in June, July, and August. Here are few facts and figures about the machinery in the elevator.

  • the old gas engine that operates the elevator runs at 400 r-p-m and puts out 10 horsepower
  • the pulley system inside the building is driven by a single rope 280 feet long
  • the total capacity of the elevator is twenty-nine thousand bushels