Just spent a day driving around Kursk and Bryansk in western Russia.Crops have enjoyed the rain over the last few weeks with spring plantings looking green and lush and as temperatures have picked up we now have some fine growing conditions.
Corn at V6-8; sunflowers in bud, sugar beet meeting across the rows, didn't see any soya or oilseed rape but if I did I would expect it to be in a similar good condition.
Cereals at full ear emergence and in full flower but one negative is rain and wind has lodged a good deal of crop, perhaps as much as 30% of what I saw from the road.
Lodged crops are not the end of the world particularly this early in the season as plants will start to bend at the node and try to sit back up again.
But it will impact on yield and ability to get that crop cut efficiently and it will impact on quality as lain crop are more vulnerable to disease and germinating in the ear.
Overall, good.