It was pretty hot in parts of the US spring wheat belt yesterday. I bet there are not too many people living in Montana that had seen a 46C day there before. The SE corner of Montana and western parts of the Dakotas experienced what the Nevada folk experience most summers. The central corn belt seemed to have dodged the worst of it yesterday, although parts of western Nebraska did climb into the high 30’s and low 40’s. The “I” states, where a large slice of the US corn crop is grown, did stay in the low to mid 30’s.
It’s not over for the Dakotas yet, both today and tomorrow are expected to push back into the high 30s or low 40s. As we move closer to the weekend there are parts of Kansas and Oklahoma that will also share in these extremes. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just, well, a hot summer for some parts of the US Midwest.

The crop condition rating for the US corn crop actually climbed 1pt to 68% G/E in last nights weekly crop progress report. In places like Nebraska around 26% of the corn crop is silking. Heat at this stage of the crop is detrimental and we may see some adjustments to the G/E rating there next week. The central corn belt is estimated between 25% and 40% silking, with just 1% of the Iowa corn crop in the dough stage.
30% of the US sorghum crop is in head, 17% of the Kansas sorghum crop is in head. Sorghum condition rating declined week on week, from 50% G/E last week to 45% G/E this week. Considering the heat expected across the US corn belt over the next few days one would expect to see a further decline in this condition rating next week. US sorghum values FOB Texas have increased. Compared to yesterdays conversion to a C&F China price and then back to an equivalent AUD price per tonne XF LPP, we see values up almost AUD$8.00/t overnight. This indicates that Australian sorghum is now significantly cheaper than US sorghum for the Chinese consumer.
Additional fumigation was applied at Graincorp Carrington on Sunday evening. How do you like your Baijiu, smoky flavoured for that extra twang.