Cool, wet spring dampening corn crop hopes

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Elmore says he's hearing similar reports from around Iowa, the nation's top corn state. Iowa farmers grew 13.85 million acres last year, about 16 percent of the U.S. corn crop, according to the USDA. Illinois was the No. 2 producer, with 13.05 million acres.

This year's Iowa crop, Elmore says, was planted wet, then rained on some more.

"If you plant wet and you get a hard, driving rain afterward, it pulverizes the soil," he said. "And you get a pretty hard, dry crust on the soil."

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Young plants, he said, can't punch through.

Other fields, he added, sat in water for days. They'll likely have to be replanted.

National Weather Service maps show wet, soggy soil stretches across the heart of the Corn Belt, from eastern Nebraska and Iowa through Ohio, where only two-thirds of the crop is in the ground.

In southern Indiana, many fields haven't dried out long enough to allow farmers to plant — period, said Purdue University corn expert Bob Nielsen.

Even a month after farmers would like to have their corn planted, "there's probably still quite a few fields that are too wet to get into," he said.

Only 77 percent of the state's expected corn crop is planted, according to the USDA. Indiana farmers were essentially finished planting this time last year.

For farmers to make up ground lost to late planting, Iowa State's Elmore said, skies need to clear and temperatures need to rise in the next few weeks. That would encourage plant growth. Then, Elmore says, the weather needs to cool a little to slow growth and allow ears to fill with grain.

But forecasts offer potentially bad news. The weather service expects cooler, wetter weather than usual for the next month in the Corn Belt.

In states where farmers have planted most of their corn, the weather has slowed growth.

"Everybody's standing around waiting for the sun to come out here and see the corn crop catch up as much as possible," Keith Glewen of the University of Nebraska Extension Service said. "We're probably two weeks behind normal."

What all this means for food costs and the ethanol industry — already under pressure for using a quarter of last year's corn crop and contributing to food-price escalation — will depend on the next few months.

Corn futures investors already appear to have priced in the delays in spring planting, according to Elaine Kub, a grain-market analyst with Omaha, Neb.-agricultural data firm DTN.

Prices haven't moved much this week on the Chicago Board of Trade, and were steady near a historically high $6 a bushel Friday.

Where prices go now, Kub said, depends on what farmers can coax from the ground and whether they'll get the right mix of sun, rain, heat and cool.

"In a couple of weeks, when we get into mid June, that's when we look at the weather," she said.

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