· Analytic
Z3754 Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt)
How fast the US Corn Belt is advancing through planting and emergence versus the five-year normal, weighted by state production share. Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, South Dakota, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Kansas (approximately 90 percent of US corn production) drive the signal; minor-producer states no longer dilute the reading.
At a glance
DORMANT · WAITING FOR APR
Current composite
+0.7668
On the plus-or-minus one scale; belt well behind 5-year pace
SEASONAL STATE
DORMANT · WAITING FOR APR
Planting-emergence is biologically complete and the NASS Crop Progress data vendor is in…
Signal state
Extreme POS
147 consecutive days in state (sustained since 2026-04-02)
All-time percentile
92.0th
Upper-decile of 26 years Historical sample is dominated by in-season firings; off-season…
moderate-pos corn fwd 60d
+5.30%
511 days (5.7% of sample), HAC t +3.60 significant at 1% Historical sample is dominated…
extreme-pos corn fwd 60d
-5.86%
1,247 days (13.9% of sample), HAC t -5.25 significant at 1% Historical sample is…
Current state corn fwd 60d
-5.86%
extreme-pos mean, edge -5.37pp vs -0.48% baseline Historical sample is dominated by…
As of Oct 30, 2026. Updated nightly. · NEXT WINDOW APRIL 2027
OBJECTIVE
The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service publishes a weekly Crop Progress report every Monday afternoon from April through November. One of the most watched fields in that report is the percentage of the corn crop that is planted and emerged versus the five-year same-week average, broken down by state. Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, South Dakota, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Kansas combined produce approximately 90 percent of US corn; the other 35 reporting states combined are the remaining 10 percent. This signal takes the state-level progress data, computes each state’s current-week minus five-year-same-week spread, and aggregates by state production share. The result is a reading dominated by what the actual production belt is doing rather than an unweighted national average that gives Iowa and New York equal statistical standing. In 2012 the Corn Belt was running fifteen percentage points ahead of normal by late April on the back of an unusually warm March, and corn traded above eight dollars by late July as drought withered the overly-mature plants during pollination. In 2019 the Corn Belt ran twenty-one percentage points BEHIND normal through late May as Midwestern floods pushed planting into the window where final yield gets compressed, and corn rallied forty cents off its March low. Here is the empirical pattern across 26 years of state-level NASS history. The behind-pace states are directionally split by magnitude. moderate-pos state (val between plus 0.2 and plus 0.5, belt mildly behind pace) delivers mean corn fwd 60d of plus 5.30 percent (HAC Newey-West t plus 3.60, significant at the 1 percent level, 511 state-days, edge plus 5.78 pp above the minus 0.48 percent baseline). extreme-pos state (val above plus 0.5, belt well behind pace) delivers minus 5.86 percent (HAC t minus 5.25, significant at the 1 percent level, 1,247 state-days). The pattern is CONTRARIAN in extremes and TREND-FOLLOWING in the mild tail: markets price well-behind delays before the signal reaches extreme-pos, but mild belt delays catch markets off-guard. Today the signal reads +0.759, in extreme-pos for 147 consecutive trading days, at the 92.0 percentile of 26 years. The signal contributes 20 percent weight to Corn Cycle DNA with polarity sign minus one; the current contribution to Corn Cycle DNA is minus 0.153, the largest negative contribution among the seven Corn Cycle DNA inputs. Read on for the three signature historical cases, the five-state verdict evidence, and the current reading in context.
LIVE CHART
Twenty-six years of US Corn Belt state-weighted development pace against the five-year normal.
The signal has been in extreme-pos for 147 consecutive trading days through Oct 30, 2026. The reading of +0.759 is at the 92.0 percentile of 26 years of state-weighted history. Signature episodes: extreme-pos firings during the 2019 Midwest flood-driven belt delay, the 2013 cold-spring belt delay, the 2008 wet-planting belt delay, and the sustained 2026 belt-concentrated planting lag now visible in the current reading. extreme-neg firings during the 2012 warm-spring belt-ahead window, the 2004 warm-April belt-ahead window, and the 2010 fast-planting episode.
COMPOSITE
+0.767 / tanh
STATE
Extreme Pos
PHASE
+1
FWD 60d
+1.81% (baseline +2.31%)
SAMPLE N
9,039 days
TODAY’S PLAYBOOK READING
STATE
Extreme Pos
STATE AND PERCENTILE
extreme-pos, 142 consecutive days. Composite at plus 0.7668 is at the 92.0 percentile of 26 years, upper-decile.
THE BELT-WEIGHTING MATTERS FOR 2026
The national-aggregate reading would place the signal near minus 0.5 (ahead-of-pace) because minor-producer states planted on-time. The belt-weighted reading places it at plus 0.77 (well behind pace) because production-dominant states lagged. The two readings diverge materially for the 2026 growing season.
POSTURE FOR THE WEEKS AHEAD
extreme-pos has historically delivered minus 5.86 percent corn fwd 60d (edge minus 5.37 pp, HAC t minus 5.25 sig at 1 percent). The empirical pattern reflects markets pre-pricing extreme-belt-delay narratives before this signal reaches extreme-pos, leaving forward windows skewed to profit-taking.
WHAT THE CHART SHOWS
The composite sits at +0.76 in the Belt Behind 5y Pace band, 92nd percentile. The blue signal line has been in the behind-pace extreme band since 2026-04-02 when the 2026 planting-emergence cycle fell behind the five-year same-week norm. The episode is now 142 trading days running. CBOT front-month corn (orange, right axis) sits near $4.48/bu.
TOP INPUTS FIRING
- Primary composite +0.76 State Belt Behind 5y Pace, phase +1, 142 trading days running (since 2026-04-02).
- Belt-weighted planting-emergence pace Production-share-weighted average across Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, South Dakota, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas — collectively approximately 90 percent of US corn.
- IC vs CBOT corn fwd 60d: Spearman -0.164, p=3.9e-38 (N=6,118) Significantly negative IC across the full sample: the extreme-pos tail (deep behind-pace) is pre-priced by the time the signal reaches it, delivering below-baseline corn fwd 60d. The author thesis is bimodal: moderate behind-pace (not yet pre-priced) delivers positive corn fwd 60d.
THE TAKEAWAY
What this means for you today
WHAT THE BELT-WEIGHTED READING IS TELLING YOU
The US Corn Belt (ten production-dominant states totaling approximately 90 percent of US corn) ran meaningfully behind its five-year same-week pace through the 2026 planting window. This is the OPPOSITE of what a national-aggregate reading would show, because minor-producer states (which carry small production shares but equal statistical standing in the national rollup) planted on-time and pulled the national average into ahead-of-pace territory. The state-weighted methodology corrects this averaging artifact and shows the production-relevant signal.
THE EMPIRICAL BIMODAL PATTERN ON THE BEHIND-PACE SIDE
The 26-year state-conditional corn fwd 60d statistics show a bimodal pattern on the behind-pace side. moderate-pos state (belt mildly behind pace, val between plus 0.2 and plus 0.5) delivers plus 5.30 percent (HAC t plus 3.60 significant at 1 percent) , the author-thesis-aligned bullish pattern: mild belt delay creates uncompensated stress-window risk. extreme-pos state (belt well behind pace, val above plus 0.5) delivers minus 5.86 percent (HAC t minus 5.25 significant at 1 percent) , the pre-priced pattern: by the time belt delay reaches extreme, markets have absorbed the delay narrative and forward windows are skewed to profit-taking. The two tails deliver opposite forward returns at consistently-significant HAC-t levels.
THE HONEST CAVEAT
The signal history is approximately 26 years (2000-01-01 through Oct 30, 2026) rather than 38 years because state-level NASS Crop Progress data begins in 2000. The pre-2000 Corn Belt may have carried similar dynamics but the signal cannot measure them from this data source. The underlying data is weekly during April-November and dormant December-March; the 142-day current extreme-pos persistence reflects the carry-forward of the 2026 belt-lag reading plus the dormant-period exponential carry. Readers should weight the signal’s state higher during April-November active-season firings than during off-season carry.
THE REGIME MAP
The three belt development-pace regime states, forward returns and sample share
Behavior across the state-weighted belt development-pace signal (CBOT corn benchmark, 2001-04-02 through present). The Behind-pace tail is the yield-risk regime; the author thesis is that late planting-emergence compresses the growing window and exposes the crop to summer heat. The signal is bimodal: moderately-behind readings deliver positive corn fwd 60d; extremely-behind readings pre-price the risk and deliver negative corn fwd 60d.
| State | Phase | Share | Fwd 60d | HAC t | Edge vs baseline | Last firings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belt Ahead Of 5y Pace | – | 26.3% (2376 d) | +0.02% | -0.27pp | May 2023, Apr 2021, Apr 2021 | |
| Belt At 5y Pace | 0 | 56.1% (5075 d) | -3.30% | -3.59pp | Oct 2024, Jun 2023, Apr 2023 | |
| Belt Behind 5y Pace TODAY | + | 17.6% (1593 d) | -2.40% | -2.69pp | Apr 2026, Apr 2024, Apr 2023 |
Twenty-six years of state-weighted belt pace dynamics, four scenes
The signal across 26 years of US Corn Belt history
THE TRACK RECORD
The last fourteen state transitions
14 transitions from 07/15/2024 to 10/23/2026 under the state-weighted belt methodology.
| State | Start | End | Duration | Fwd 60d SPY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belt At 5y Pace | 10/23/2024 | 04/01/2026 | 361d | +4.92% |
| Belt Behind 5y Pace | 04/02/2026 | 10/23/2026 | 142d | +13.87% |
Scroll inside the table for the full history. Forward 60-day SPY is measured from each run’s start date; a reader cannot trade off a start-date they only identify in hindsight, so this is a transparency log, not an alpha claim. Asterisked (*) returns are partial. The run is less than 60 trading days old. The full 60-day comparable fills in as more data arrives.
What this measures
The engine queries USDA NASS Crop Progress state-level weekly data for CORN. For each state in the production-weighted basket (Iowa 0.19, Illinois 0.15, Nebraska 0.12, Minnesota 0.11, Indiana 0.08, South Dakota 0.07, Ohio 0.05, Missouri 0.05, Wisconsin 0.04, Kansas 0.04 , totaling approximately 90 percent of US corn production), computes the current-year reported percentage planted + emerged minus the trailing-five-year mean for the same ISO week within that state. The per-state spreads are weighted by production share and combined into a national-equivalent belt-weighted spread. The series is forward-filled daily, z-scored on a 504-trading-day rolling window with 126-day minimum, polarity-inverted (so positive val = belt behind pace), and tanh-bounded to the plus-or-minus one scale. Five-state machine on the final the primary composite: extreme-neg below minus 0.5, moderate-neg between minus 0.5 and minus 0.2, NORMAL between plus-or-minus 0.2, moderate-pos between plus 0.2 and plus 0.5, extreme-pos above plus 0.5.
Why it matters
THE STATE-WEIGHTED METHODOLOGY RESOLVES A NATIONAL-AGGREGATE ARTIFACT
The USDA NASS national-aggregate corn-planted and corn-emerged tables average all 45 reporting states with equal weight, meaning New York (approximately 0.1 percent of US corn production) carries the same statistical weight as Iowa (approximately 19 percent). The 2026 planting season illustrates the artifact: minor-producer states planted on-time while Corn Belt states lagged, and the national-aggregate reading placed the signal in ahead-of-pace territory. The belt-weighted methodology weights by state production share, correctly surfacing the production-relevant signal.
THE BIMODAL EMPIRICAL PATTERN ON THE BEHIND-PACE SIDE
Across 26 years of state-weighted history, the behind-pace side of the state ladder splits by magnitude. moderate-pos state (val between plus 0.2 and plus 0.5) delivers plus 5.30 percent mean corn fwd 60d with HAC Newey-West t plus 3.60 significant at the 1 percent level. extreme-pos state (val above plus 0.5) delivers minus 5.86 percent with HAC t minus 5.25 significant at the 1 percent level. The economic interpretation: mild belt delay catches markets off-guard and the stress-window-risk narrative pays via forward rally; extreme belt delay is pre-priced before the signal reaches extreme-pos, leaving forward returns skewed to profit-taking.
THE Corn Cycle DNA WIRING AT POLARITY MINUS ONE
Corn Cycle DNA ingests this signal at 20 percent weight (highest-tier input) with polarity sign minus one. The current positive reading of +0.759 (belt in extreme-pos, well behind pace) translates into a Corn Cycle DNA contribution of minus 0.153 (equal to plus 0.7668 times minus 1 times 0.20), the largest negative contribution among the seven Corn Cycle DNA inputs today. The Corn Cycle DNA polarity choice reflects a cycle-DNA design philosophy that treats extreme belt delays as late-cycle pre-priced conditions. The empirical extreme-pos state’s minus 5.86 percent corn fwd 60d supports this wiring: in current extreme-pos, the standalone signal is bearish for corn, and the polarity minus one contributes bearishly to Corn Cycle DNA.
GO DEEPER
What state-weighted Corn Belt development pace has meant for corn forward returns across 26 years of US growing-season history
Full 12-minute research brief in PDF: the state-weighted belt methodology (ten states, ~90 percent of US corn production), the 2019 Midwest flood extreme-pos archetype, the 2012 warm-spring extreme-neg case, the 2013 cold-spring extreme-pos counter-example, the bimodal behind-pace empirical pattern, and the four documented limitations.
Signal consumers and companion lenses
Not investment advice · The analysis on this page is informational and educational. Signal readings, historical case figures, and empirical statistics are derived from publicly available data and are provided without warranty. Hypothetical performance results have inherent limitations, including the benefit of hindsight. Readers who intend to trade should consult a licensed investment professional and see the research brief for the full disclaimer.
Last refreshed Nov 02, 2026 11:08 AM ET