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Grain Supply Update: Sept. 6, 1996



Fran: Friend and Foe
		Grain Supply Update: September 6, 1996	
			© Geri Guidetti, 1996


Yesterday’s WSJ Commodities report opens with:  "Soybean and corn 
futures prices fell after a private forecasting firm predicted record 
crop yields this fall, and some weather forecasters predicted Hurricane 
Fran would bring heavy rains to the dry Eastern corn belt."

Record crop yields?  Ummm, I don’t think so!  Though we ducked the 
bullet when Hurricane Fran’s big brother, Edouard, headed out to sea 
last week, Fran made up for his wanderlust by slamming into Cape Fear, 
North Carolina last night.  As national news coverage inundates us with 
horrific video of coastal damage ranging from splintered beach homes to 
erosion to pleasure boats tossed onto interstate highways, keep in mind 
that the more significant tragedy lies in the fields of corn, soybeans 
and other crops further inland.

Though not widely covered by the national press, North Carolina is one 
of 17 key corn and soybean producing states.  It has been a bright spot 
during a particularly challenging agricultural season, with 100 percent 
of its corn crop dented.  Dent corn, you may recall, is a type of corn 
grown for meal and feed; it is named for the horizontal dent that 
appears across the top of every kernel as it reaches maturity.  North 
Carolina’s corn fields were bulging with maturing corn needing only a 
bit more time to ripen and dry before harvest.

Enter Fran.  Not a little girl, she measured between 450 to 500 miles 
across.  Moving inland between last night and today, she has walloped 
the fields, farms and coasts of the Mid-Atlantic states—NC, SC,VA, 
WVA,MD—with torrential rains and winds ranging from 45 to 124 mph, 
depending on where you are relative to her eye.  If you’ve ever grown 
corn, you know that it doesn’t usually take more than a bad thunderstorm 
to knock down a field of mature plants and Fran is more than that—much 
more.  

Over the next week, you may want to pay attention to the buried, "page 
7" stories of the agricultural impact of the hurricane.  USDA, private 
agricultural firms and investment analysts will soon begin their 
assessments, which, I believe, will be far worse than Wall Street is 
currently predicting.  Our hoped-for bumper crop of corn and soybeans 
needed to replenish diminished national stockpiles will have to come 
>from  someplace else.

Yet, there may be an upside to Ms. Fran.  As she continues to track 
northwest today and tomorrow, she will bring much needed tropical 
moisture to the Eastern corn belt states.  Both rain and warm weather 
would accelerate the development of crops that are lagging anywhere from 
18 to 43 percentage points behind average for this point in the growing 
season.  If we are to have any chance of beating the Fall’s first frost 
to the corn and soybeans, we need both Fran’s rains and, then,  warm 
weather to follow them.  This coming week looks promising.  Bets are 
still off on the timing of the first frost, but projections may be 
possible within the next two weeks.  We do need a break.

It wouldn’t feel like a discussion of  the 1996 growing season without 
noting the opposite, extreme weather continuing in the West, Northern 
Plains and Northwest.  Hot, dry conditions favored the harvest of Spring 
wheat across the Northern Plains and Northwest, but the West, in 
general, continued to lose crop and grazing lands to wildfires sparked 
by lightning.  A week ago, I reported that 4.3 million acres, 247% of 
normal, had burned.  By the end of this week, 5 million acres of crops 
and prairie had been blackened, a full 270% of normal.

Harvest projections on the larger, international, grain supply scene may 
soften the blow of low U.S. supplies this year.   China’s State 
Statistics Bureau reported this week that the country expects a record 
grain harvest in 1996.  Total crop production is expected to increase 
5%.  Grain production areas of the former Soviet Union reported weather 
favoring the harvest of Spring grains, and conditions improved in both 
Mexico and Australia.  If foreign, bumper crops do materialize this 
season, it would certainly ease some of the pressure on U.S. harvests 
and U.S. consumers….Geri Guidetti, The Ark Institute
**************************************************************
Build Your Ark!  How to Prepare for Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times…
Book I: Food Self-Sufficiency  http://www.lis.ab.ca/walton/geri.html
Grain Supply Updates:     http://www.lis.ab.ca/walton/geri1.html
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