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Wet conditions slow corn planting progress

USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey says early season planting progress has been slow in much of the Midwest and Plains.

“We call this crop progress but given the weather that we’ve been seeing in many major production areas of the U.S. that may be a bit of a misnomer here as we head into mid-April,” he says.

He says U.S. corn planting fell behind the five-year average last week, but there was some progress in Missouri and Indiana.

“Looking at those two, Missouri has just six percent of the acreage planted for corn and before that storm moved in, Indiana had one percent of the acreage planted,” he says.

But, for Missouri, that’s well behind the national five-year average of 15%. 

Rippey says Indiana is on pace with the five-year average.

As of Sunday, three percent of the U.S. corn crop is planted, compared to the five-year average of 5 percent