The final Crop Progress Report for 2019 is out as a summary for the year. And it verifies all the challenges state farmers had in growing crops this year. The average temperature for the growing season of June through September was 65.6 degrees—a full degree lower than last year. Rainfall across the state from April through September totaled just over 29 inches compared to 27.35 inches in 2018. Normal rainfall for the period has been 22.4 inches. Corn planting didn’t wrap up until June 30th—18 days behind last year and a full 3 weeks behind the average. And corn condition peaked at just 69% this year—near the end of September. The report also shows harvest progress the slowest in 40 years as only 74% of the corn had been harvested by December 8th with moisture levels still well over 20%.
But some farmers had a good corn growing year—especially in Virginia. David Hula farms near Charles City, Virginia and he set another corn growing record this year—his 4th. On one of his irrigated fields, Hula had corn yields of 616.2 bushels per acre—smashing the record he set in 2017 of 542 bushels an acre. Second place this year was from a Georgia farmer at 553 bushels an acre while Hula also had the third highest yields at 545 bushels an acre. Hula said he started with 52,000 plants per acre and got plentiful rain and warm weather to help the crop grow.
The recently agreed to U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal almost hit a snag over the weekend over some language regarding labor. Mexican officials were worried that the deal called for more U.S. Labor Department officials to work in Canada as labor attaches. But Mexican officials read the language of the deal that they would be labor inspectors. But U.S. Trade Ambassador Robert Lighthizer released a letter yesterday saying they would not be inspectors and would not interfere with Mexican labor laws. That apparently met with the satisfaction of Mexican officials so it looks like a vote in the House will happen on Thursday.
The Cooperatives Working Together Program continues to support dairy product exports. In November the program shipped almost 3 million pounds of cheese, over a million pounds of whole milk powder and 262 thousand pounds of cream cheese to Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America and Oceania.
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