US corn’s long goodbye edges closer to completion at 83%; NASS

The US corn harvest has taken another step towards completion with progress now at 83% as of November 13, a thirteen-percentage point change week-on-week and closing the lag behind the five-year average which would expect the harvest to be 91% complete by this stage.

The data was released by the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service on Monday.

The progress is in line with industry expectations although winter is closing in and some of the major corn-producing states continue to lag and are battling heavy weather.

North Carolina is the first state to declare its harvest 100% complete, although the state was the 19th biggest producer of corn in the 2016 harvest, producing 121 million bushels of corn – less than 1% of total US corn production that year.

The three biggest producers, Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska, have made great strides in catching up, and now stand at 85%, 90% and 86% complete – an average of just over 6 percentage points behind their anticipated rate of progress versus the five-year average.

Collectively the three states contributed just over 44% of the 2016 corn harvest, or some 6.694 billion bushels.

Some significant producers continue to show slow progress, however, with North Dakota and Ohio showing completion of 76% and 71% respectively, behind the 2012-2016 average of 85% for each state.

Wisconsin shows the greatest lag though – the Upper Midwest state was, at 573 million bushels, the eighth biggest producer in 2016 and has seen significant disruption from weather slowing the harvest pace.

As of November 13, 56% of the harvest has been completed, versus 81% by the same stage of 2016.