Nebraska corn 82% good to excellent, 34% silking

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said today that 34 percent of Nebraska’s corn crop was silking as of July 17. That’s up from 9 percent last week but is below the five-year average of 52 percent silking by this point, while last year 55 percent was silking.

Warm weather over the weekend and into this week, however, will allow later-planted corn to catch up very quickly.

As for crop conditions, USDA said 82 percent of Nebraska’s crop was in good to excellent condition, with 14 percent fair and only 4 percent poor to very poor. A week ago the numbers were 84, 12 and 4 percent, showing the crop has declined a bit but that is fairly normal for this time of year, especially considering some acres were flooded and are now being hammered by hot weather.

Nationally, USDA said 66 percent of the crop was in good to excellent condition, 23 percent was fair and 11 percent was poor to very poor. A week ago those numbers were 69, 22 and 9 percent, while last year they were 72, 19 and 9 percent.

Nationally, 35 percent of the crop was silking, which was up from 14 percent last week but is behind the five-year average of 47 percent. A year ago, 62 percent of the crop was silking.

This week's photo comes from the Holdrege FFA Chapter. For more photos, be sure to check out the Nebraska Corn Board's 2011 crop progress photo set on Flickr.

For more details of Nebraska's corn crop, visit the Corn Board's Crop Progress Update page.