Illinois corn and soybeans are continuing to advance toward the fall harvest. The latest crop progress report from the USDA says 75-percent of the Illinois soybeans are rated as in good to excellent condition (50% are rated good and 25% excellent). Eighteen percent of the beans are rated fair, 4-percent poor and 3-percent very poor.
Eighty-percent of the Illinois corn crop is rated either good or excellent. Sixty-four percent of the Illinois corn was in the dough stage, compared to thirty-two percent at this time last year. Six-percent of the corn was in the dent stage, compared to one-percent last year.
Seventy-seven percent of the soybeans were setting pods as of July 29th, compared to 48-percent last year.
[Note: The photos, taken Monday, July 30, 2018 by VermilionCountyFirst.com News, are of a cornfield near Georgetown. It is the same field that suffered extensive wind damage earlier this spring. The crops have bounced back from that earlier storm.]
The Trump Administration announced last week that it plans to provide $12-billion dollars in temporary relief to farmers and agriculture groups being stressed by tariffs. Steve Fourez is a Vermilion County farmer who also serves on the Illinois Farm Bureau Board of Directors. He sees the temporary relief as something good….
And Fourez says he has been doing some figuring on how the tariffs will impact farmers if something is not done soon to resolve it….
Fourez added that it is too bad farmers are caught in the middle of the tariffs because agricultural trade has been pretty advantageous for the United States.
[Vermilion County Farm Bureau contributed to this story.]
