This is going to bring this to a completely new level.
"Estimates show 3 million acres of corn under water and probably 2 million didn't get planted. So that gets you up to 5 million or over 700 million bushels, and that takes out the entire carry-out," he said, referring to estimates for grain stocks carried over to the next crop year in September 2009. Weekend reports of more rains and flooding in central Iowa and western Illinois fed the speculative gains on Monday. The two states usually produce a third of U.S. corn and soybeans. Crop loss estimates have flown around the markets since Friday, when agronomist Palle Pedersen of Iowa State said about one-quarter of Iowa's soybean acres and at least 8 percent of the state's corn either have not been seeded or will need replanting due to flooding.
Replanting of corn and beans this late in the season is problematic becausea the crop will have less time to develop strong root systems, stems, stalks, and leaf cover to withstand harsh heat of July and August, when plants mature. Corn prices have soared since the U.S. Agriculture Department last week trimmed its U.S. corn average yield projection by 5 bushels per acre and cut its season-ending stocks estimate for the 2008/09 marketing year to 673 million bushels -- the smallest in 13 years. That was before last week's flooding.