Bob Bowman runs his hand over a slender green corn leaf here on his Iowa farm, and sighs.
"This corn should be as high as my head right now, and it is only waist high," he says, as a cool morning breeze belies the 90-degree Fahrenheit temperatures forecast to descend by afternoon in Welton, Iowa.
"If we get rain real quick here, we might be down 25 percent," said Bowman of prospective losses from the persistent dryness. "If we don't get rain in the next two weeks, it will be a lot more serious."
Bowman farms 2,200 acres in east-central Iowa in one of the state's highest production areas. There may not be much to brag about this year, however.
After getting off to a record-fast planting pace following the mildest winter in decades in the Midwest that promised a record harvest, the corn crop got into trouble when rains became scarce, especially during pollination when yields are set. And a scorching heat wave hit the state recently.
Taking a cue from a deteriorating crop, the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday cut its estimate of this year's corn production in the United States, the world's top grower and exporter, by 12 percent, slashing the average yield by a whopping 20 bushels to 146 per acre.
Prices of corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade have surged 40 percent this summer in the wake of the worst drought in about 25 years in the Midwest grain belt.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/13/us-usa-drought-iowa-idUSBRE86C0WX20120713
No comments:
Post a Comment