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1. Recap. Around 31 million acres of corn will be unplanted as of June 2nd. This is what Mother Nature is going to allow. The next question is how many of the 31 million acres will be planted to corn, how many will go prevent plant (PP), and how many switched to soybeans?
2. I want to first say that getting to an answer to what will happen to the 31 million acres intended to be planted to corn is fraught with uncertainty. I will walk through some thoughts but it is a volatile highly uncertain situation.
3. My first point is that we already know that topsoil conditions will be basically a lake or extremely wet as of June 2 over a big chunk of the Corn Belt. This means that the wet areas are probably going to need no more rain and around a week to dry out after June 2. 
4. So, important to keep in mind that even if the weather turns off drier after this weekend, that the wet areas are going to need some time to dry out before planting (anything) can proceed. This means the week of June 2-8 will likely not be another great planting week.
5. The wet conditions in large areas of the Corn Belt at the start of the June 1-10 window should be considered before automatically thinking that farmers are going to plant corn in this window.
6. Why are the wet conditions so important when thinking about planting corn during June 1-10th? Lots of bad things tend to happen when you "mud" corn in, which means the late planting yield hit on corn can be even larger than in average conditions during this period.
7. Some great information on managing corn and soybean production when planting is late can be found in this #FDD article by Emerson Nafziger farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2019/05/managi… Plenty of other resources out there from crop scientists about bad things that happen when planting wet.
8. Not only do you risk a major yield hit this year by planting corn so late in wet conditions, you also can create major compaction problems in fields that can haunt you next year.
9. To add to the misery of planting corn the first 10 days of June, there is the prospect of the extreme mess of getting an immature crop frosted off next fall, or failing that very high drying costs because the crop does not have time to dry down properly.
11. Want to point out an extremely useful decision tool for thinking about corn maturity issues from the Midwest Regional Climate Center found here mrcc.illinois.edu/U2U/gdd/
12. This example assumes planting corn on June 10 in Champaign Co IL using a 108 day hybrid. Notice that the black layer stage (maturity) is not expected to be reached until October 20th! That is right in the middle of major frost risk.
13. Hopefully, this example helps illustrate why high drying costs are a real risk because the crop matures so late in October and temps normally are just not warm enough to dry the corn in the field. Yes, there is a range of uncertainty, but this is the expectation.
14. If you doubt this can happen, talk to farmers who had $50/acre drying costs back in 2009. Poof. There goes your MFP2 payment.
15. I am not saying that no one should plant corn from June 1-10, just that there are major risks and costs that don't seem to be getting a lot of discussion. Farmers really need to think about these risks and potential costs before running the corn planter in June.
16. Finally, there should be a price of corn that is high enough to offset the risks and potential extra costs. Will consider that in next thread. But I don't think $4 will do it for most.
