The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service released its updated crop progress report earlier this week, which is Week 41 of the year. Included in this report is a table showing the current progress of the 2018 corn harvest compared to last year and the previous 5 years. However, I thought it would be instructive to see how the harvest this season has compared to seasons going back to the early 1980s. Table 1 shows that, for the nation as a whole, corn harvest is right on track. Further evidence of this is depicted in Figure 1, which shows that the harvest in 2018 (dashed gray line) has been progressing along quite well this season compared to recent years. However, this figure also shows that progress was slowed down a good bit last week.
Figures 2 and 3 offer an explanation. With the slow-moving, deep trough over the western half of the U.S. last week, significant precipitation occurred over much of the Corn Belt. In addition, below average temperatures persisted over much of the western and northern Corn Belt. The combination of significant precipitation and cool temperatures (including snow in much of Nebraska, western Iowa, and Minnesota this past Sunday) led to little harvest progress in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. All of those states are currently behind the long-term average/median, though not historically behind.
States east of the Mississippi have had more favorable weather for harvest this month and harvest is ahead of the long-term average and considerably ahead of the western and northern states of the Corn Belt. The good news is that sunny, dry weather has returned to the region and is expected to persist into next week. Expect a lot of progress in the next two weeks and harvest percentages to be above the long-term median and possibly exceeding 2015-2016 percentages by Week 43.
State |
Current |
Mean |
Median |
Maximum |
Minimum |
|
ILLINOIS |
71 |
52 |
50 |
93 |
6 |
|
INDIANA |
51 |
37 |
31 |
90 |
10 |
|
IOWA |
17 |
34 |
31 |
87 |
6 |
|
KANSAS |
63 |
69 |
71 |
97 |
40 |
|
MICHIGAN |
20 |
18 |
15 |
60 |
3 |
|
MINNESOTA |
18 |
30 |
26 |
90 |
2 |
|
MISSOURI |
79 |
67 |
72 |
95 |
37 |
|
NEBRASKA |
25 |
33 |
29 |
81 |
7 |
|
NORTH DAKOTA |
12 |
22 |
21 |
84 |
1 |
|
OHIO |
31 |
23 |
22 |
64 |
4 |
|
SOUTH DAKOTA |
17 |
29 |
27 |
90 |
2 |
|
WISCONSIN |
19 |
20 |
17 |
54 |
2 |
|
NATIONAL |
39 |
40 |
39 |
79 |
13 |
Table 1. Percent of corn harvested in the 12 U.S. states in the Corn Belt and across the nation. The mean, median, maximum, and minimum values are based on reported values in NASS from 1982-2017.
Figure 1. Percent of corn harvested nationally in 2018 at Week 41 compared to the median (1982-2017), the previous four seasons, the maximum (2012) and the minimum (2009) harvested at this point in the season.
Figure 2. Total precipitation across CONUS between 1 and 16 October 2018.
Figure 3. Departure from the average temperature across CONUS between 1 and 16 October 2018.