This week’s USDA Crop Progress report shows that corn harvests remain behind last year’s numbers and the 5 year average, while soybean harvests are nearing completion. Additionally, cotton harvest is coming in slightly above average, while sunflower harvest remains considerably behind in 2 of its key states.

In the 18 states that harvested 94% of last year’s corn acreage, corn harvest came in at 89% harvested this week, below the 97% harvested this time last year and the 5 year average of 98%. Several states are notably behind in their corn harvests this week, including 66% harvested in Michigan, 80% in South Dakota, 66% in Wisconsin and 36% in North Dakota.

Soybean harvests were reported at 96% complete, only 1% behind their progress from last year (97%) and 3% below the 5 year average (99%) among the 18 states that harvested 96% of last year’s cotton acreage. The most notably behind state was North Carolina at 75% harvested. However, this is just 2% below the state’s 5 year average of 77% and 4% above their harvesting progress of 71% this time last year.

Cotton harvest remains above both its 5 year average (81%) and is progress from this time last year (74%) with 83% of cotton acreage reported harvested this week. Sunflower harvest is still dramatically behind both last year’s progress (81%) and the five year average (94%) at just 65% reported harvested this week. North Dakota and South Dakota remain the 2 states of the 4 that harvested 86% of last year’s sunflower acreage that are reporting their harvests behind, at 51% and 71% respectively.

According to this week’s report, the NASS will release another Crop Progress report on Dec. 9 covering corn harvested, cotton and sunflowers harvested. They will also continue to monitor the harvest status of these crops to see if additional reporting will be necessary.