09/18/23 Drought Still Grips both the Heartland and the Beltway

Harvest has begun here. The earliest planted corn on light ground was combined to get an early harvest premium at the ethanol plant. The family intends to start the earlage harvest next Monday. I expect there will be an early soybean field missing here soon as well. While cool temps and some moisture may have stabilized the deteriorating soybean condition none of the crops will be adding bushels. My partner says that the top clusters are missing and is worried about small beans. We were expecting 68-73 bpa and now we have revised that lower to 58-63 bpa. When both yield and price go lower the impact on gross revenue is sobering. We think USDA at 50.1 bpa is still too high. Hope that we are too pessimistic but it was an unfavorable end to the growing season that should negatively impact soybeans most. I am binning our soybeans in the hope that sometime the soybean market better reflects reality. We hope that the weak soybean market doesn’t know something that we don’t. Both corn and soybeans will have extreme yield variability driven by the luck of rain, soil type and planting dates. While my silage appraisal was 261 bpa…