With the help of new technology (thank you Agrible) I have been monitoring the weather at our sites. In the 19 sites we are to visit, 9 are below average annual rainfall, 2 are currently at average and 8 are above annual rainfall. 5 sites in the Northwest part of our tour are already more than 5 inches of rain ahead of normal (10 year average) and the majority of their rainfall has been received since April 10th. Conversely Stark and LaSalle Counties in Illinois are more than 4.5 inches short of normal at this point. They represent the areas shortest on moisture.
Temperatures to date have been warm in comparison to any normal measurements. As measured by growing degree days (GDD), all sites are over their 10 year normal and 30 year normal. Dodge Nebraska is the highest above normal at 179 degrees above their 10 year average. Ogle County Illinois is closest to the 10 year norm at only 86 degrees above normal. This time of year we average between 130 and 180 GDD's per week. So the highest is only 1 week ahead of normal and the lowest is about 4 days ahead. Certainly this is not a big deal in my opinion.
The markets have been off to the races here the last 30 days. Seems that every farmer I talk with wants to compare this season to 2012. Clearly this is not 2012 at this point. I have attached two different drought monitoring tables below. As you will notice by the week we toured in 2012, a majority of the area we tour was in a moderate to severe drought. Looking back at our posts, we thought it was dry, but if we would receive normal rains, the crops looked spectacular. If you look at the 2016 chart it is clearly not extremely dry in any of the area we will travel.
2012 Drought Monitor on 6/26/2012
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/jpg/20120626/20120626_conus_trd.jpg
2016 Drought Monitor as of 6/7/2016
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/jpg/20160607/20160607_conus_trd.jpg
What are we looking for in 2016? Obviously we are going to monitor the stage of the crop, the condition and estimate OUR perception of yield potential. One other major emphasis will be to estimate corn versus soybean acreage. Again technology has helped us plot the exact fields that we will visit (thank you ACREVALUE.com). If by chance we visit the field and it is growing soybeans instead of corn, we will investigate further but assume that there was a switch in crop from corn.
Here is our tour map. Let us know what questions you have and we will try to answer them as we go.
Blog with you again next week!
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