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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
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Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times…
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