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Missouri crops ahead of schedule, soybean conditions improve

Rance Daniels, a farmer in southeast Missouri, tells Brownfield it’s been an interesting growing season so far.

“All our crops are ahead of schedule this year.”

He’s expecting rice harvest to begin in early September.

“There will be some rice cutting the last of August, some of the rice that got planted the end of March. It’s a little earlier than than normal.”

The USDA says 61 percent of the rice crop is headed in Missouri, just shy of 10 percentage points ahead of the five-year average. 

It’s not only rice. USDA says 15 percent of Missouri’s corn is dented and 51 percent of the soybeans are setting pods, both ahead of average.

The exception in Missouri is cotton. Sixty-one percent of Missouri’s cotton crop is setting bolls, right below the average for this time of the year.

Corn conditions are rated 66 percent good to excellent, a slight decline from the previous week, with soybeans conditions improving two percentage points at 64 percent good to excellent.

Daniels raises rice and soybeans in Dunklin County.