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Ag economist calls current crop conditions “worst since 2012”

With more than 20 million US corn and soybean acres in poor or very poor condition, a Farm Bureau economist says this year’s crop conditions are the worst since the drought of 2012.

“From the road you might see a field that looks pretty good, but once you get inside of it you can see the unevenness and I think that is what is being reflected in these conditions reports.”

John Newton tells Brownfield conditions are much better than they were in 2012, but he hasn’t seen this level of market uncertainty in several years.

“What’s not impacting the market these days? We knew we had historic delays in planting, so the market was really anticipating a lot of prevent plant and then you have these crop conditions. There’s just a lot of uncertainty on what we actually have out there.”

The USDA’s most recent crop progress report showed Illinois leads the nation with more than 4.2 million corn and soybean acres in unfavorable condition, followed by Indiana at nearly 2.5 million, Iowa at nearly 2 million, Missouri and Ohio at more than 1.9 million each, and Minnesota at more than 1.4 million.

The USDA’s next crop progress and conditions report comes out Monday at 4:00 eastern.