US farmers likely seeded just 15 percent of their soyabean acreage during the latest week, as damp fields and spotty rain hampered efforts to finish much-delayed planting tasks, analysts said. Soyabean planting was 86 percent done as of June 16, according to the average of estimates in a Reuters Poll of 16 analysts.
If realised, that would be the slowest pace for soyabean seeding since 2008, when only 84 percent of the crop had been seeded by the middle of June. The same time a year ago, farmers had finished all their planting. During the last 10 years, on average, farmers had finished 93 percent of soyabean planting by mid-June.
The US Agriculture Department will update the pace of soyabean planting in its weekly crop progress and conditions report, which will be released at 4 pm EDT (2000 GMT) on Monday afternoon. USDA is not scheduled to update corn planting even though it said in last week's report that farmers still had 5 percent of their corn acreage left to seed.
In its first soyabean conditions rating of the year, USDA was expected to peg the crop as 62 percent good to excellent, according to the average of estimates from eight analysts. Corn ratings were seen rising 2 percentage points to 65 percent good to excellent, based on the average of estimates from 12 analysts. A year ago, the corn crop was rated 63 percent good to excellent and soyabeans were 56 percent good to excellent.