• Ten of the 11 Crop Watch locations received no rain last week
• Lack of rain combined with warm temperatures may have trimmed top-end soybean potential in central Corn Belt states
• Minnesota and the Dakotas welcomed last week's warmth to push corn closer to maturity
• Upcoming rains could help later-planted fields
• Three Crop Watch soybean fields and one corn field may be harvested this week

NAPERVILLE, Illinois, Sept 16 (Reuters) - A handful of the U.S. Crop Watch corn and soybean fields will be ready for harvest this week or next, but recent dry weather has raised some questions over yield potential.

North Dakota was the only Crop Watch location to observe rain last week and the amounts of up to 1.5 inches (38 millimeters) were beneficial to fields there.

Temperatures were well above average last week across the entire Corn Belt, delighting producers in the Dakotas and Minnesota, where corn development has been lagging.

Elsewhere, the warm and dry week was less welcome because of how scarce moisture has been in recent weeks. At least four of the 11 producers (in western Iowa, southeastern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio) directly mentioned the recent weather shrinking yield potential, especially for beans.

Harvest activity has yet to pick up in earnest, but some producers report that early bean yields in their areas have not been as high as previously hoped. Talk in Indiana includes bean yields being "great but not as good as last year."

The western Iowa producer added that 2024 is "another year of late heat and dryness taking the top end off (of yields)."

Producers in Nebraska and eastern Iowa heard of some good-to-very-good corn results in their areas, but there are not enough reports from which to draw conclusions.

SOY YIELDS EASE

Crop Watch producers continue to rate yield potential on a 1-to-5 scale. Yield potential incorporates both visible and non-visible elements where 3 is around farm-average yield, 4 is solidly above average and 5 is record-high or close to it.

The 11-field average soybean yield dropped to a season low of 3.45 from 3.52 in the prior week based on a full-point cut in western Iowa, which is now rated at 4. Soy yield in Nebraska also eased slightly, but last week's favorable weather in North Dakota boosted those beans by a half-point to 2.5.

The western Iowa producer has started harvesting the Crop Watch soybeans and says that the disappointing results so far might be related to the variety, which performed well a year ago.

Average corn yield ticked up slightly to 3.32 from 3.3 a week earlier because of a quarter-point boost in North Dakota. All other corn scores were unchanged.

RAINS POSSIBLE LATE WEEK

The Corn Belt is in store for yet another week of well-above-average temperatures, but there are some chances for rain by the weekend that could benefit crops that have not reached full maturity.

Rain is scheduled to hit Iowa and areas to the north and west, meaning that Illinois and points east will probably stay dry for at least the next 10 days.

The western Iowa and western Illinois soybeans are projected for harvest on Monday, and the Indiana soybeans and Ohio corn could be completed by the weekend. The Kansas corn is the only one of 22 Crop Watch fields harvested so far.

Karen Braun is a market analyst for Reuters. Views expressed above are her own.

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https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/crop-watch-dry-weather-skims-soy-yields-heat-helps-northern-corn-2024-09-17/