Row Crops Today — June 1, 2026
The 5-minute 5 AM brief for row crop producers and ag professionals
Headline Stack
📋 USDA opens first ARC/PLC base acre adjustment window since 2002 — up to 30M acres available through Aug. 31
📊 Stark County tops Illinois at 253.6 bu/acre corn; state averages 214 bu on 11M acres
🌍 Strait of Hormuz disruption stalls one-third of seaborne fertilizer supply
🌽 Ohio State: corn planted after May 1 needs 6.8 fewer GDDs per day to mature
🌾 Nebraska researchers say sorghum outyields corn below 21 inches of annual rainfall
Top Story
📋 USDA opens first ARC/PLC base acre increase window since 2002. — LINK
Eligible landowners have from today through Aug. 31, 2026 to review and act on potential base acre increases for farms enrolled in Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, under a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed July 4, 2025. Up to 30 million new base acres can be added nationwide, and if eligible requests exceed that cap, USDA will apply an across-the-board, prorated reduction to all approved new base acres. To qualify, a covered commodity must have been planted or prevented from being planted during the 2019–2023 crop years, and the farm's average planted and prevented-planted acres in that period must exceed total existing base acres in effect on Sept. 30, 2024. Total base acres cannot exceed the farm's total cropland acres. "This is the first chance for adding base acres since 2002," said Bill Beam, FSA Administrator. Base Allocation Summaries are available at fsa.usda.gov/arc-plc via a Login.gov account or through local FSA county offices beginning June 1.
More This Week
📊 Stark County leads Illinois corn at 253.6 bu/acre as state averages 214. — LINK
USDA NASS data show Illinois harvested 2.354 billion bushels of corn from 11 million acres in 2025 at a 214 bu/acre state average; Stark County topped at 253.6 bu/acre across 85,000 harvested acres, with DeKalb at 244.4 and McLean at 243.1.
"Stark and Tazewell counties had the state's top average corn and soybean yields, respectively, in 2025," wrote Tom C. Doran, AgriNews.
Illinois soybeans averaged 62.5 bu/acre for 639.375 million bushels on 10.23 million harvested acres; Tazewell led at 76.3 bu/acre and 16 counties cleared the 70-bushel mark for the second straight year.
🌍 Hormuz shutdown stalls roughly a third of global seaborne fertilizer supply. — LINK
Fertilizer prices jumped sharply after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February shut commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway the United Nations says carries about one-third of the world's seaborne fertilizer supply.
"We got rid of cows, so we wouldn't have to rely on buying fertilizer," said Trevor Thieman, a Webster County, Mo., farmer whose family has worked the same ground for 125 years.
Thieman said the spring spike forced a reassessment ahead of fall applications, when fertilizing can help crops survive the winter but adds cost for operations already stretched thin.
🌽 Ohio State: late-planted corn needs 6.8 fewer GDDs per day to mature. — LINK
Research from Bob Nielson (Purdue) and Peter Thomison (Ohio State) shows corn hybrids planted after May 1 require 6.8 fewer GDDs per day to reach black layer; a 2,700-GDD hybrid planted May 30 effectively needs just over 2,500 GDDs to mature.
"Later-planted corn requires fewer heat units to mature, a phenomenon known as GDD compression," the Ohio State Extension article states.
The U2U Corn GDD decision-support tool at go.osu.edu/corngdd projects cumulative GDDs and estimated black-layer dates against a 30-year history but does not auto-adjust for compression — growers must manually enter the adjusted hybrid rating.
🌾 Nebraska sorghum outyields corn below 21 inches of annual rainfall. — LINK
Sorghum yields run 10% to 20% below corn yields under average precipitation but outyield corn when fields receive 21 inches of moisture or less per year, according to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
"But it is very drought-resilient. It's also very heat-resilient and doesn't need as much input such as nitrogen-based fertilizers, things like that," said Andrea Eveland, principal investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
The U.S. Drought Monitor currently shows most of Nebraska in red, the category indicating the most severe drought conditions.
Basis Watch
Nebraska Southeast old-crop corn basis firmed 5 cents on Friday, May 29, leading a broad round of improvement across old-crop corn locations. Colorado North Central old-crop corn also strengthened 5 cents at the top end, while Iowa Southeast and Nebraska Central added 4 and 3 cents respectively. The pattern aligns with the spring clearout season, when old-crop supplies tighten ahead of planting. New-crop corn moved the other way, with Kentucky Pennyrile softening 3 cents on the December contract.
Soybean basis was mixed. Missouri North Central old-crop soybeans firmed 15 cents and Nebraska Northwest improved 10 cents. Iowa Southeast old-crop soybeans broke 17 cents at the top end, well outside what other locations reported.
Source: USDA AMS
Illinois harvested 2.354 billion bushels of corn from roughly 11 million acres in 2025, averaging 214 bushels per acre statewide.
How did you like today's issue? [email protected]