There were some decent falls across the eastern parts of the US hard red winter wheat belt over the last 7 days. Some locations in Oklahoma saw 50-100mm of rain. These storms moved across the central corn belt too, adding some moisture to land about to be sown to summer crops.
The high plains area of Texas and western Kansas appear to have missed last weeks rainfall. Over the next 7 days these western regions are expected to see some rain though. Western Kansas potentially seeing 25-50mm of rain.
Of the HRWW belt central Oklahoma had been the driest, both last weeks rainfall and more follow up rainfall this week should start to see conditions improve there. It’s probably too late to improve yields in hard red winter wheat, but it should go a long way to preventing further a decline in yield.
The USDA start their weekly crop progress reports this week. Texas is 42% sown for sorghum, this is behind both last year, 49%, and the 5 years avg of 46%. 30% of the wheat crop in Texas is now in head, Oklahoma just 3%. The condition rating of the Texas crop is indicated at just 17% good to excellent, this is very low. In addition to that, the percentage of the crop rated poor / very poor is a massive 51%. Oklahoma is no better, the G/E rating is just 12%, P/VP 54%. Further north in Kansas, the largest wheat producing state in the US, the G/E rating is 38%, not great, but much better than further south. The percentage of the Kansas crop rated P/VP is high too, but also much better than Texas and Oklahoma, at 24%.
The whole US winter wheat crop, including soft red winter wheat in the north and HRWW, is rated at 35% G/E, compared to 48% G/E this time last year. Soft red winter wheat in the north is doing much better than the central and southern states. This rating is supportive to price.
France remains abnormally dry, seeing little to no rain across the major cropping regions over the last 7 to 14 days. The forecast isn’t great either, dry weather is predicted not only for much of France, but also much of Germany and Poland will be dry for the week ahead. Further east Russia is generally not in too bad a shape, falls could be heavier in central and western Russia but the black soil plains of the Black Sea area are seeing average to above average rainfall.