U.S. Harvest Moving Along At Rapid Pace

Harvest in the U.S. is moving along at near record pace.

 

Dan Basse is president of AgResource Company in Chicago.

 

"We're moving along very rapidly," he said. "This is one of the fastest harvests we have seen. We'll be in the vicinity of 65 per cent harvested through Sunday (soybeans). In the area of 45 or 47 per cent on corn. Another two or three weeks we'll be virtually completed. The weather forecast looks favourable giving us a good 10 days to get stuff cut. The only problems will be with Louisiana, with that hurricane coming ashore. Short of that, the weather forecast looks very good."

 

The USDA released its October WASDE report this Friday morning.

 

"The big changes were really in what we would consider to be the Farm Service Agency Program data, which indicated a million acres less of U.S. corn, 700,000 less of U.S. soybeans in terms of planted and harvested. That gave a smaller crop. They didn't change the U.S. corn yield very much. Down a tenth of a bushel at 178.4; soybean yields held steady at 51.9. USDA also indicated that they harvested close to 93 per cent of their objective yield plots in corn, 64 in soybeans, so as we go forward these yield numbers are going to stand fairly well," added Basse.