Temperature hotter than in previous growing years
By Colin McNaughton
Farms.com Risk Management Intern
It’s been a crazy summer in the U.S. corn belt, will corn yields be able to recover? Let’s take a look at the summer of 2023 growing season, to see what is possible.
The U.S. Corn Belt experienced an early/dry start to the growing season in the months of April/May followed by some moisture in the last week of June and first 2-weeks of July followed by hot/dry weather again.
According to NOAA, below average precipitation from April through June at 7.35 inches below both last year t 8.80 inches and 2012 at 9.93 (July precipitation data not yet available) is suggesting that the month of August 2023 needs to provide above average moisture in the month of August to help soybeans in the reproductive stage but also help corn with kernel fill.
This year's cropping season has been plagued by significantly less than ideal precipitation. With the normalized difference vegetation index (NVDI) worse than last year, coupled with a drought and U.S. crop conditions worse than 2022 with less-than-ideal subsoil moisture will genetics surprise everyone again in 2023?
To reach the precipitation level recorded last year in the U.S. corn belt, an additional nearly 7 inches of rain would have been required in July 2023 alone. The 2012 drought saw extreme heat in July and August, combined with minimal precipitation. This spring/summer has seen less than desired precipitation, but what’s been missing has been the extreme heat.
Temperature-wise, the first half of 2023 has seen relatively higher readings compared to both last year and the NOAA's median values. The average temperature reading for the US primary corn and soybean growing region from January to June 2023 stands at 48.6 degrees F, exceeding the 46.2 degrees F recorded last year and even higher than the NOAA's first-half mean reading of 45.7 degrees F.
Furthermore, the temperatures in the last three months alone (April to June 2023) have been at an average of 62.4 degrees F, which is higher than both last year's reading of 61.8 degrees F and NOAA's mean reading of 61.1 degrees F for the same period until June.
It is also important to put a large emphasis on the precipitation levels in August. The mean level of precipitation in August throughout the U.S. corn belt is 3.38 inches. Comparing this to recent years, 2012 was far below with 2.67 inches. On the other hand, 2018, where we saw a record corn yield at 176.4 bushels per acre, and soybeans at 52.1 bpa, precipitation levels came in at 4.81 inches, 1.43 inches above the mean!
Will August bring the rains we need? Only time will tell.
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