Latest Planting in Four Years

The early rounds of the 2018 row crop season have some notable similarities to 2014. Winter temperatures were the lowest since that year in many northern and central areas, punctuated by a harsh cold wave in the first three weeks of April. Much of the Midwest and the Northern Plains had the coldest April 1-18 stretch on record. The cold, along with several occurrences of heavy and record-breaking snow, have led to fieldwork getting off to a very slow start. Even preliminary tasks, like fertilizer application, have been close to impossible to accomplish.As for corn planting itself, only 5% of the U.S. corn crop was assessed as being planted as of April 22, only one-third of the five-year average of 15%.