Growing conditions in the US?

[rain]

How bad are things in the US. Specifically Iowa, Illinois regions?

[melvill]

There are a couple of places to look for US growing conditions:

1) The US Drought Monitor is updated once a week on Tuesdays. It's at http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html

2)Good US precip maps are at: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/regional_monitoring/usa.shtml

[agstar77]

Go to AGWEB.com , look at crop comments. They don't look like a happy bunch.

[agstar77]

Another clue might be the soybean future up .38 .

[melvill]

Another good report to look at is the USDA Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin. It's available at: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/nassr/field/weather/

The next report comes out late in the afternoon on Mondays, except today, (July 5) because of the July 4 holiday. Look at crop condition by percent. Pay attention to the totals for good to excellent for the entire area and compare that to week ago and year ago info.

For example, in the June 27 report, soybeans were rated 59% good to excellent compared to 63% the week before and 66% the year before.