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1. Seeing talk that farmers in the Corn Belt will keep planting corn until June 10th and corn futures are now down for the day after a wild overnight session. I have a few thoughts about where things might be headed regarding corn planting. Here goes.
2. Want to start with where things stand and what Mother Nature is going to allow as far as planting progress goes next 2 weeks. I think it is important to keep in mind that the market has continuously over-estimated corn planting progress so far this year.
3. Where we stand is that only 58% of the corn crop was planted as of May 26, leaving 39 million acres of corn unplanted. 
4. Some historical perspective on how big a planting mess this is. Over the last 40 years, previous worst late planting years were 93, 95, & 96. Worst years. 2019 planting progress as of Sunday was 29% behind 93, 13% behind 95, and 20% behind 96!! Incredible.
5. So, we know US corn planting progress is terrible and that around 39 million acres are left to plant (as of last Sunday). Key question seems to be how much can be planted this week and next? Most discussion I see is around price needed to buy acres out of PP.
6. I think we should instead focus first on the simpler question of what corn planting is Mother Nature going to allow in the next two weeks. I think this chart is critical to help answering that question.
7. Chart shows acre-weighted surplus topsoil for the US Corn Belt in 2019 compared to the bad planting years in the 1990s. The Sunday reading on this measure was the highest we have observed in the available data since 1995.
8. Think about this stat for a minute. Half the acres in the Corn Belt are now rated in the highest surplus topsoil moisture category. And I will not be surprised that it goes a bit higher next week given the rains this week.
9. This tells us that planting conditions have gotten worse not better in the last week and probably are getting even worse this week in much of the Corn Belt.
10. The data tell me that planting conditions for much of the Corn Belt have been bad since early April, are bad right now, and will be bad for at least all of this week and a good chunk of the next week.
11. Given the wet conditions and rain this week, I am probably being a bit generous, but I project that an additional 9% of US corn crop will be planted this week. Same progress as last week. That will bring us up to a whopping 67% next Sunday, June 2nd.
12. My planting progress forecast for this week implies that one-third, yes that's right, one-third of the US corn crop will be unplanted as of June 2nd. That is 31 million acres. You can fuss with the assumptions but we are not going to be too far from that number.
