'Do-or-die' time approaches for corn crop

'Do-or-die' time for the corn crop
Jeff Caldwell 07/05/2012 @ 1:37pm

"Hot or cold, wet or dry, price the crop before the 4th of July."

That's the old adage that Agriculture.com senior contributor Red Steele says he's considered in the past when marketing grain. But, this year, that's all out the window.

"Today has proven this old adage wrong...the question now is by how much and when the screw turns," he says.

The grains have traded sharply higher the last few days as more and more market attention is focused on the growing drought in corn and soybean country. The current soybean price for the July contract marks a 4-year high, while July corn was, on Thursday, sitting at a 10-month high.

The market commotion comes as the red continues to spread on the U.S. Drought Monitor map. Red color signifies "extreme" drought conditions on that map, and on the latest version, updated Thursday, virtually all of Missouri and Kansas are under either severe or extreme drought conditions, while the amount of land in the latter category has expanded immensely in the southern Corn Belt in the last 2 weeks.
See more of the latest from the Drought Monitor

While the driest parts of the Delta and western Plains could see some relief in the coming days, the 6- to 10-day outlook shows conditions will likely continue to spiral downward in the heart of the Corn Belt, where mounting drought losses have some farmers already calling this year's crop a failure.

"The continued dry pattern across the central Midwest will allow drought conditions there to increase further," says MDA EarthSast Weather senior ag meteorologist Don Keeney. "The 6-10 day outlook offers more improvements across the Delta, Southeast, and southern and western Plains, while further reductions in moisture are expected across the central and western Midwest and east-central Plains."

New information out Thursday shows just how much those "further reductions" could trim this year's corn yield. Trend yields are out of the question for a lot of farmers this year. That doesn't come as a surprise to many, including those in the eastern Corn Belt who say they may not even see a corn crop this fall.

A new estimate from Commodity Weather Group (CWG), LLC, out Thursday shows just how far below trend the crop could wind up this year; it shows from the central Plains to the eastern Corn Belt, much of the corn crop could fall further than 10% below trend.

According to CWG, farmers in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Arkansas will likely raise a crop that's between 6% and 10% below trend yield, while those in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama will struggle to raise a crop that's within 11% or more of trend. Farmers in Minnesota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa still have a a chance to make a crop "near trend," the CWG report shows, while at this stage in the year, North Dakota farmers could still raise an above-trend crop. Altogether, these numbers yield a national average forecast 7% below trend.

"Taking these factors into account, our current U.S. corn yield estimate is 152.2 bu/ac. This remains just over 3% above last year’s yield at the moment but is about 7% below trend," according to CWG. "Using the current USDA acreage estimates, this would give a total U.S. production of 13.52 billion bushels."

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Even though CWG meteorologists see an easing of the heat by the latter half of July in the most drought-stricken parts of the nation's midsection, it's likely coming too late to reverse the damage done, making plenty of room for that 152-bushel/acre yield estimate to slip in the coming weeks.

"There is still more risk to the downside of our current yield estimate than the upside, as the information shown here is a point forecast and does not factor in forecast conditions for the balance of July," CWG's report says. "Notably above trend yields are expected to be limited to fringe acreage in the Eastern U.S. primarily."

Yes, yields will continue to fall. So, what's it doing to the corn plants out there? Right now, pollination's underway in the heart of the Corn Belt, but bad timing between corn plants' release of the pollen and uptake by silks means there will likely be a lot of ears with far fewer kernels than normal, if the pollen takes and doesn't abort altogether.

“In some fields, more pollen is being shed in early afternoon than in the normal mid-morning period. The problem comes when the temperature is above 90 degrees when the most pollen was being shed. At such temperatures, silks are often not as receptive as they would have been at 70 to 75 degrees earlier in the day," says University of Illinois Extension agronomist Emerson Nafziger. “We also expect that silk numbers may lag due to water shortages. If plants are struggling to take up enough water to push tassels out above the leaves, we can expect silks to struggle as well, at least those that emerge late. We remain optimistic that kernel numbers will be OK in many fields, but in the past two years we have had a great deal of kernel abortion, and there is every reason to believe that this will recur in 2012."

But, in some areas, simply surviving through pollination may be a monstrous feat for drought-starved corn plants. In parts of Indiana, corn plants anywhere from 2 to 5 feet tall are tasseling. When they're that small, it's a sign that a natural defense mechanism has kicked in and photosynthesis is "going downhill very fast." When that's happening at this critical juncture of plant growth, the consequences can be major.

"In addition to not using as much water under stress, you are not allowing as much carbon dioxide in the plant in order to keep photosynthesis going. Leaves will deteriorate, plants stop growing in height and stalk elongation stops. You will see evidence that chlorophyll is degrading. you can see patches begin to fade and almost turn a gray color," says Purdue University Extension agronomist and corn specialist Bob Nielsen.

Even if the trend reverses now and rains start to fall in places like Indiana where the rainfall shortages are some of the most severe in the Midwest, that's not a guarantee that the plants will recover.

"Drought stress is really so severe that, even with rain, on a field like this, pollen shed is so far advanced now that a good soaking rain would have minimal effect because so much damage has already been done," he says.