-US corn/soybean conditions improve thanks to continued unexplainable IL revisions
-US winter wheat planting continues without issue
-Mostly dry western/central belt forecast aids harvest progress expectations
-Ukraine winter grain planting advancing nicely
 USDA’s weekly Crop Progress update yesterday afternoon showed a 1% increase in U.S. corn crop conditions to 59% good/excellent vs overall expectations for conditions to remain unchanged and remain comparable to last year’s 61% g/e at this time. The increase in overall conditions was due to a notable increase in IL conditions by 12% g/e to 74% as, for some reason, weekly condition updates in IL have been all over the board throughout this growing season. Since the start of condition reports in late May, IL conditions have averaged a weekly change of more than 5% in g/e in either direction over the entire growing season. By contrast, IN conditions have averaged a 1.3% g/e weekly change, MO, NE and WI roughly 2% weekly changes and IA, KS, MN and OH roughly 3% average weekly changes. The current weighted condition index of nationwide corn conditions is nearly identical to last year and 2019, while the USDA is currently estimating the U.S. average corn yield 4.3
bu/acre above last year and 8.8 bu/acre above 2019. Early harvest results continue to be extremely mixed, but generally have not been “better than expected†with “disappointing†reports not being uncommon. Nationwide corn harvest is 10% complete, in line with average with IL 11% complete, IA 4% and MN 6%. Most of the western/central corn belt is expected to be mostly dry over the next 10-14 days.
 U.S. soybean conditions last week were also up 1% in g/e to 58% vs unchanged expectations and remain well below last year’s 63% g/e at this time and are above only 2019 to be the 2nd lowest of the last 8 years in mid-September. IL soybean conditions also showed an unexplainable 14% g/e increase this week, with a similar situation to corn conditions for the state being seen this year as conditions have changed by nearly 6% in g/e on average in either direction each week throughout the growing season. The USDA’s 50.6 bu/acre nationwide average soybean yield estimate is 0.4 bu/acre above last year’s despite conditions being well below year ago levels. U.S. soybean harvest is 6% complete, in line with average, with IL 1% complete, IA 4% and MN 11%.
ï‚· U.S. winter wheat planting is 21% complete vs 18% average with no major deviations from average in HRW or SRW states at this time.
 For full details on this week’s USDA Crop Progress update, please see our post at https://portal.rjobrien.com/MarketInsights/Blog/Read/45219.
 Ukraine’s winter wheat is now 18% planted vs none of last year’s crop being planted at this time given unfavorably dry conditions. The ag ministry is currently estimating winter wheat area to rise 9.5% this year.
 Kazakhstan sees this year’s total grains harvest at 16.0 MMT, better than earlier expectations of 15.3 MMT, but still down from last year’s 20.1 MMT (17.4 MMT 2019). Despite the higher crop ideas, they lowered expectations for total 2021/22 grain exports to 6.0-6.5 MMT from earlier ideas of 6.5-7.0 MMT and compares to USDA’s reported total grain exports last year of 9.2 MMT and estimate of this year at 8.1 MMT. Kazakhstan grain exports mostly consist of wheat and barley to Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan.