Up until the rainfall yesterday, considerable early season progress was being made on the corn and soybean planting. The USDA NASS release on Monday estimated 4% of the state's corn planted by Sunday the 14th. The featured chart presents the yearly progress of NASS estimated corn planting with the weekly values linearly interpolated. The location of 4% completed is denoted with a white X. Remarkably, this year is shown a little bit behind even last year, but still ahead of most recent years. It is also interesting to see how much earlier planting progress is happening over the past 20 years or so vs the 20 years prior to that. Some of that has to do with climate change allowing for earlier planting opportunities. It also is due to technology improvements to seed treatments and other things allowing for more aggressive planting during marginal temperature conditions.

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