CHICAGO: The progress of the US corn harvest advanced to 12 percent this week, up five percentage points, while soybean harvest progress reached 11 percent, up eight percentage points, the US Department of Agriculture said in a weekly crop progress report on Monday.
Mostly dry weather favored field work, but the harvest of both crops was still off to the slowest start in four years, following widespread planting delays last spring. The USDA said the five-year average for corn harvest progress for this time of year is 23 percent and the five-year average for soybeans is 20 percent.
Ahead of the report, a Reuters poll of analysts pegged corn harvest progress at 15 percent and soybean progress at 11 percent.
The United States is typically the world's biggest corn supplier and the second-biggest soybean exporter after Brazil.
The USDA's report indicated that farmers shifted their focus from corn to soybeans in the last week. Earlier this month, some had rushed to harvest corn, paying to dry high-moisture grain in an effort to capture high prices for early deliveries.
Those premiums have begun to disappear, making it more cost-effective for farmers to let corn dry down naturally in the fields.
"Soybean harvest was active in southern counties and high moisture corn was being taken for delivery to feedlots and ethanol producers. Widespread corn harvest was limited due to high grain moisture levels," the Nebraska field office of the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service said in its report.
Soybean conditions improved, with 53 percent of the US crop rated as good to excellent, up from 50 percent a week earlier. For corn, 55 percent of the crop was rated good to excellent, unchanged from the previous week.
"Crop ratings from this point forward are a reflection of what surveyors are hearing on yield," said Arlan Suderman, an analyst with Water Street Solutions in Peoria, Illinois.
"I was a little bit surprised by the strength of the soybean condition ratings. I imagine you put that together with what we did today on the charts, and that makes it tough to hold today's low," he said, referring to the Chicago Board of Trade November soybean contract.
The futures contract fell to a six-week low below $13 per bushel after the USDA said in a quarterly report that US Sept. 1 soybean stockpiles were larger than trade expectations.
In its weekly progress report, the USDA said 63 percent of the corn crop was mature, compared with the five-year average of 70 percent. Sixty-seven percent of the soybean crop was dropping leaves, a sign of maturity, compared with the five-year average of 74 percent.
WINTER WHEAT PLANTING EXPANDS
Farmers had seeded 39 percent of the US winter wheat crop, up from 23 percent a week earlier and near the five-year average of 40 percent. The USDA said 12 percent of the crop had emerged, compared with the five-year average of 15 percent.
Beneficial rains fell in the southern Plains hard red winter wheat belt.
"Some counties in northwest Kansas received more than an inch (2.54 cm) of rain, while most areas received around a half inch which was good moisture for newly seeded wheat," USDA's Kansas field office said.
The US spring wheat crop, grown in the northern Plains and the Pacific Northwest, was 95 percent harvested, near the five-year average of 96 percent.
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