CHICAGO, June 15 (Reuters) - A stretch of dry weather following planting season has stressed crops across the U.S. Midwest, raising concerns that the forecasted record corn and soybean harvest will fall below expectations.
A bumper harvest is needed to replenish global stockpiles and restore competition on the export market that has been dominated by cheap Brazilian crops in recent months.
"Some of the seeds are just lying there in the soil," said Dale Haudrich, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on his 1,000-acre farm near Waterloo, Illinois. "You expect some kind of rain during the time period to get it up and growing."
Haudrich estimated that the dryness could cut yields in his area by as much as 25%.
The U.S. government left its forecast unchanged in its most recent estimate of the crop size but farmers and analysts are noting the crops have struggled through early development stages.
Meteorologists forecast an El Nino weather pattern this summer that typically brings wetter and cooler than usual conditions to the Midwest but it may arrive too late to reverse the damage done during the past few weeks.
Crops in major production states in the eastern U.S. Midwest such as Illinois, Indiana and Michigan were under the most pressure, according to government condition reports. Crop ratings in southern areas of the U.S. Plains such as Kansas and Nebraska - states that need to produce robust yields if the record harvests are to be realized - also were below average.
The dry weather helped farmers speed through planting but the arid conditions have led to uneven stands of corn in many fields and growers have reported that some soybeans have struggled to emerge through the crust on the topsoil.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said that just 59% of the U.S. soybean crop was rated good to excellent as of June 11, the lowest for mid-June since 2008. That year, the soybean harvest came in 4.4% lower than the government's initial projection.
Good-to-excellent ratings for corn fell 3 percentage points to 61% in the latest week, the third straight week USDA has reported a decline in ratings. The mid-June corn condition was the lowest since 2019, when the corn harvest came in 9.3% below the government's May forecast.
Both corn and soybean ratings were well below the national average in Illinois, the biggest soybean-producing state and the second-biggest corn state. "Much of the state is abnormally dry or in moderate drought," said Talon Becker, a commercial agriculture educator at the University of Illinois. "In the driest areas, you are definitely seeing some stress."
The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, prepared by a consortium of climatologists, showed that 89% of the Midwest was abnormally dry as of June 13, the highest level since the drought of 2012.
Traders are closely monitoring every change in the weather.
Chicago Board of Trade November soybean futures, which track the crop that farmers will harvest this fall, have rallied 8.2% this month after falling to their lowest level in nearly two years at the end of May. CBOT December corn futures were up 5.1% during the same stretch.
The signs of stress are easy to see even without doing a close inspection of the fields, said Jon Rosenstiel, a farmer in Pearl City, Illinois, who grows corn and soybeans on 2,000 acres.
"We have not mowed the yard in a couple of weeks and that kind of tells you what the crops are doing," Rosenstiel said. "They are getting by and they are still alive but they need that moisture. We are kind of getting to the critical time." (Reporting by Mark Weinraub in Chicago Editing by Matthew Lewis)
