Farms.com Home  › Ag Industry News

U.S. corn starts to emerge

U.S. corn starts to emerge

About 2 percent of the crop is up, a USDA report says

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Some U.S. corn plants have emerged.

About 2 percent of the 2022 U.S. corn crop has emerged, the USDA’s Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin said on April 24.

This is down 1 percent from last year.

With projections for U.S. corn acres sitting around 89.5 million acres in 2022, this means corn across 17.9 million acres has emerged.

For context, South Dakota’s total crop acreage in 2021 was about 16.8 million acres.

On a state level, corn in Texas has emerged the most.

More than half, 59 percent, of corn in that state has emerged.

That number represents a 10 percent jump from last week, the USDA’s report says.

Aside from Texas, only North Carolina (32 percent), Tennessee (3 percent) and Kansas (1 percent) have reported any corn emergence.

Spring wheat has also started to emerge across the U.S.

About 2 percent of U.S. spring wheat are up, the USDA’s report indicates.

This means spring wheat has emerged across 2.24 million acres of U.S. farmland.

On a state level, spring wheat in Washington State is the furthest along.

The spring wheat crop in that state is 24 percent emerged, followed by Idaho (10 percent), South Dakota (4 percent) and Montana (1 percent).

And soybean planting continues across the United States.

Farmers have planted around 3 percent of the crop, the USDA says.

The Prospective Plantings report in March indicates farmers intend to plant 91 million acres of soybeans in 2022.

This means soybean plants across 2.73 million acres have emerged.

To put that number into context, Michigan farmers harvested about 2.3 million acres of soybeans in 2021.

Louisiana farmers have planted the most soybeans so far.

Growers there have planted 39 percent of their soybean acres, up from 23 percent last week.

Farmers In Mississippi (24 percent) and Arkansas (12 percent) are the only others to record double digit planting progress.


Trending Video

How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.