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

USDA’s Crop Progress report for the week ending Nov. 14 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.