About 4 percent of crops have dropped leaves, the USDA says
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
U.S. soybeans are inching closer to harvest readiness.
About 4 percent of U.S. soybean acres have dropped leaves, the USDA’s Aug. 28 Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin says.
This is down from 8 percent last year around this time.
With 88.3 million acres of soybeans planted in 2022, this means about 3,532,000 acres of soybeans have dropped leaves.
For context, farmers in Alabama planted about 3.2 million acres of soybeans this year.
Soybeans in Louisiana have dropped the most leaves.
Crops in that state have dropped 55 percent of its leaves, the USDA report says. This is up from 29 percent last year.
Other states with noteworthy levels of soybeans dropping leaves are Mississippi (23 percent), Arkansas (13 percent) and Nebraska (10 percent).
Five states, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin, haven’t reported any soybeans dropping leaves yet.
Spring wheat harvest continues across the U.S.
Farmers are about halfway through the 2022 spring wheat harvest, the USDA’s report says.
This is up from 33 percent last week.
Of the six major states known for spring wheat production, farmers in South Dakota are the furthest along with 92 percent of their spring wheat harvested.
Farmers in the state planted about 770,000 acres of spring wheat this year, meaning approximately 708,400 acres have been harvested.
Farmers in North Dakota have harvested the least amount of wheat at this point with USDA reporting 34 percent of the state’s 5.4 million acres, or 1,836,000 acres of spring wheat harvested.
U.S. corn continues to mature as well.
About 8 percent of U.S. corn is mature, the USDA’s report indicates. This is up from 4 percent last week.
Corn producers planted 88.9 million acres of corn in 2022, meaning 7,112,000 acres of corn are mature. That’s roughly the corn acreages of North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania combined.
Of the major corn producing states in the U.S., corn in Texas is the furthest along.
Corn in that state is 72 percent mature, followed by North Carolina with 62 percent of its corn mature, the USDA says.