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Crop progress: Winter wheat quality jumps higher

USDA reports the 2024 corn and soybean harvests as nearly complete.

Ben Potter, Senior editor

November 12, 2024

2 Min Read
Winter wheat in fall
Getty Images/Andreas Krappweis

USDA’s latest crop progress report, out Tuesday afternoon and covering the week through November 10, showed winter wheat quality ratings continuing to rise after improving another three points this past week. USDA also updated harvest progress for a variety of crops in today’s report.

Corn harvest moved from 91% completion a week ago up to 95% through Sunday, mirroring analyst expectations. That puts this season’s progress well ahead of 2023’s pace of 86% and the prior five-year average of 84%. Pennsylvania is the largest outlier among the top 18 production states, with 67% of its corn crop harvested.

Soybean harvest inched closer to the finish line, from 94% completion a week ago up to 96% through November 10. That’s moderately ahead of 2023’s pace of 94% and the prior five-year average of 91%. USDA has marked four of the top 18 production states (Louisiana, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota) as 100% complete.

Cotton harvest moved from 63% completion a week ago up to 71% as of November 10. That’s moderately ahead of 2023’s pace of 64% and the prior five-year average of 63%. Louisiana is closest to the finish line among the top 15 production states, with 98%.

Other regional harvest paces include:

  • Sunflowers = 81% (up from 65% last week)

  • Sugarbeets = 97% (up from 93% last week)

  • Sorghum = 91% (up from 85% last week)

  • Peanuts = 82% (up from 73% last week)

Related:Crop progress: Corn, soybean harvests near the finish line

Winter wheat plantings moved from 87% completion a week ago up to 91% through Sunday. That’s slightly behind 2023’s pace of 92% and the prior five-year average of 93%. Emergence reached 76%, up from 66% a week ago.

Quality ratings jumped three points higher, matching analyst expectations, with 44% of the crop now in good-to-excellent condition. Another 38% of the crop is rated fair (up two points from last week), with the remaining 18% rated poor or very poor (down five points from last week).

Click here for more data from the latest UDSA crop progress report, including a state-by-state look at topsoil and subsoil moisture, days suitable for fieldwork and more.

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Crop Progress

About the Author

Ben Potter

Senior editor, Farm Futures

Senior Editor Ben Potter brings two decades of professional agricultural communications and journalism experience to Farm Futures. He began working in the industry in the highly specific world of southern row crop production. Since that time, he has expanded his knowledge to cover a broad range of topics relevant to agriculture, including agronomy, machinery, technology, business, marketing, politics and weather. He has won several writing awards from the American Agricultural Editors Association, most recently on two features about drones and farmers who operate distilleries as a side business. Ben is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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