The forecast for favorable weather across much of the US Midwest is helping grains start the week lower. A warmer and drier pattern will help many of the regions that have been hindered by suboptimal weather over the last few weeks. Even with the improvement in the weather outlook, soils are still pretty wet, and it will take more than a few days of sunshine to make up for lost time in corn planting. See USDA soil moisture profiles for late April and early May; as mentioned last week, the extended outlook will allow for a recovery of much of the lost time, but progress will still be slow at the start of the current week due to wet soils. USDA’s 2009 estimated planted acres for corn are already slightly below last year’s estimate, and an additional acreage shift to beans due to wet soils could come into play later in the season.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 10:17 am and is filed under Agriculture, Global Commodities, Global Weather, Grains. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.