Index was in line with market expectations; USA is expected to see heavy rain at the end of the week, especially east of the Corn Belt
This Monday (1), the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) brought its first harvest monitoring bulletin for the 2024/25 season, with field work already started for corn and cotton in the summer harvests.
Cereal planting has reached 2% of the projected area so far, the same rate as in the same period last year. The average for recent years is 1%. Sowing in the United States traditionally begins in the Delta region, a little further down and east of the heart of the Corn Belt, with the state of Tennessee already having 57% of its area planted, compared to 56% last year and 53% of average.
The USDA also reported that 3% of the cotton area has already been planted in the USA, the same number as in 2023 and compared to the 4% multi-year average. In the case of spring wheat, only 1% of the area was sown.
With the first planting numbers beginning to arrive, the market’s attention will turn even more to the weather conditions in the North American Midwest. The information should overlap with the USDA’s most recent estimates of a 3% increase in soybean area and a 5% and 4% reduction, respectively, in corn and wheat for the new season.
“Wetter weather is forecast for later this week – particularly in the eastern Corn Belt, where some fields will accumulate more than 70mm or more of rainfall between Tuesday and Friday, according to the latest 72-hour rainfall map of NOAA”, reports the North American portal Farm Futures.
Further ahead, in the period of 8 to 14 days, forecasts indicate the continuation of the wetter weather pattern for the Midwest and the Plains, with temperatures higher than normal, especially next week.
The first map shows the rain forecast for the period from April 9th to 15th:
The second, temperatures, which are expected to be above average for the period in practically every producing area in the USA:
