# Crop Progress: Harvest Now Slightly Ahead of 5-Year Average

Author: Jim Steadman
Published: 2021-11-15
Canonical URL: https://www.cottongrower.com/cotton-production/crop-progress-harvest-now-slightly-ahead-of-5-year-average/

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[USDA’s Crop Progress report for the week ending Nov. 14](https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/8336h188j/jh344t178/c534gp293/prog4721.pdf) is pretty simple. Harvest is its only focus. And for cotton, it’s the third consecutive week of an overall 10 percentage point increase.

But this one’s important, because with 65% of the overall U.S. cotton crop now reported as harvested, the 2021 crop is now one percentage point ahead of the 5-year average for this date. In essence, the crop, as a whole, has caught up.

That’s certainly not quite the case on an individual state basis, but the gap between actual and average continues to close. Ten cotton producing states showed double-digit percentage increases in the past week, with four states – Arizona, California, Oklahoma, and Texas – now reported ahead of their respective averages.