Planting has begun for barley, corn, cotton, oats, rice, sorghum, spring wheat, and sugarbeets, according to the first Crop Progress report issued for the 2021 planting season by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). By this time last year, 2% of the corn crop had been planted, 2% has been planted so far in 2021. Six percent of the cotton crop has been planted, 1 percentage point behind the same time last year. Fourteen percent of the sorghum crop has been planted, 1 percentage point behind a year ago. Barley, oats, rice, spring wheat and sugarbeet plantings are similar to 2020 progress.
Crop Progress reports are released the first workday of the week during the growing season from April through November. The reports list planting, developmental, and harvesting progress, and overall condition of selected crops in major producing states. Crops featured in the report include corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, cotton, oats, barley, peanuts, sugarbeets, and sunflowers.
The reports also document soil moisture condition, days suitable for fieldwork, and pasture and range condition. The data, summarized by crop and by state, are republished along with any revisions in the NASS Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin. Crop progress and condition estimates are used by producers, agribusinesses, and traders to assess current growing conditions in order to reduce or eliminate inherent risks of doing business. Other users include federal, state, and local government agencies, educational institutions, agricultural economists, and others for planning, decision making, and research.
In addition to the Crop Progress report data, other resources are available to NASS data users. Crop Progress and Condition Gridded Layers are geospatial datasets representing county-level data presented in a grid format. These data layers currently include data on U.S. corn and soybean crop condition and progress by week. Datasets from 2015-2020 are also available at:
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Research_and_Science/Cropland/Release/index.php.
The Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics (Crop-CASMA) is a new web-based tool to help visualize soil moisture and crop vegetation conditions. It was designed and developed by NASS in collaboration with NASA and the George Mason University (GMU) Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems. This tool is free to the public and available at:
https://cloud.csiss.gmu.edu/Crop-CASMA/.