The USDA weekly crop progress report was out last night. The corn crop is 94% silking, 61% dough stage, 16% dented, and the crop condition rating was unchanged from last week at 48/13-61% G/E. US soybeans shed 1pt in the G/E rating, now pegged at 62% G/E. Cotton shed 2pts, now rated just 40% G/E.
The US sorghum crop is 31% colouring, Kansas is 48% in head, Texas 89% in head and the US national G/E rating for sorghum fell 1pt to 35% G/E this week, that’s pretty bad. Just 6% of the US sorghum crop was rated excellent. I wonder what percentage of that was irrigated.
For wheat we see 91% of the winter wheat crop is now harvested. Spring wheat is 24% harvested, S.Dakota leading the way after a dry finish, currently 65% harvested there versus the 5 year average pace of 53%. The Good to excellent rating for US spring wheat was back 4pts !!, now rated at 51% G/E. Minnesota is rated 82% good, keeping the average high. The bigger production states of N.Dakota and Montana were rated 44% G/E and 50% respectfully.
The 4pt drop in the G/E rating for the spring wheat crop surprised a few punters. Not enough to stop spring wheat futures falling the most of any grade, but we’ll see what tonight’s session brings.

USDA WASDE report is out tomorrow night. Pre report estimates from the US trade have the corn production estimate lower than the July WASDE numbers. Not a heap lower, but probably enough to keep values flat, unless the punters and the USDA are no where near each other. The punters are backing little change to the USDA numbers for soybeans between the July and August reports.
I’m starting to think the bigger changes will be in international numbers, not the US numbers. European summer crops have been crushed by the drought. Yields in N.Africa appear to be a smidge lower than the punters have been predicting. Then we have ending stocks for Black Sea grains, exports are slow and every week that grain is slow stocks are increasing. The world stocks to use ratio is not expected to fall below 30%, so world wheat remains comfy.