Iowa suffers from late summer drought (click title to entry - thank you)
September 7, 2011
by bschweig
...But the continued dryness has prompted private forecasters to drop the projection for Iowa’s yields to as low as 164 bushels per acre, the number the Professional Farmers of America tour posted late last week.
Those numbers set off a fresh rally for corn prices on the Chicago Board of Trade, pushing the December contract for corn above $7 per bushel and generating predictions of continued tight supplies of corn for livestock feeders and ethanol plants going into 2012.
Farmers said the rain that fell on Iowa last week didn’t help the corn crop.
“We got three-quarters of an inch of rain, which will help the soybeans, but it’s too late for the corn,” said John Heisdorffer, who farms west of Washington in what has been one of the driest areas of the state.
Heisdorffer said the cornfields in his area have shown the characteristic yellowing and drooping leaves associated with excess heat and lack of moisture.
“In a good year we expect to get 180 to 200 bushels per acre,” Heisdorffer said. “We won’t be close to that this year.”
In western Iowa, the situation is much the same. Brian Larson, whose Sunderman Farm Management of Fort Dodge manages farms in and around Webster County, pegged average yields at around 150 to 160 bushels per acre, well below the 200 bushels per acre Iowa can produce in a robust year.
“Six weeks ago this was looking like a really fine crop,” Larson said. “Now it will be only average, if that.”
The National Weather Service forecasts a chance of thunderstorms, with rainfalls totaling no more than a quarter-inch, through Saturday with clear weather through Labor Day. High temperatures will cool from the upper 90s Thursday to the mid-70s by Sunday.
