Markets Watching the Weather

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

It’s that time of year that markets are watching weather closely. Corn is being planted or has just been planted, and wheat is approaching harvest. Standard Grain’s Joe Vaclavik says that both dryness and freezing temperatures could be factors.

Vaclavik… “We start off with dryness that's been building in the southern plains and also in part of the northern plains. If you look at the drought monitor, you have drought that started essentially in parts of Colorado and further west than there, and it's moved east. It's moved into at least the western half of Kansas, maybe the Oklahoma, Texas panhandle neighborhood. And then you've got some lesser dryness that's developing in, say the western half of North Dakota. I'm not going to get overly excited about this. I'm not going to say you that you need to be real bullish row crops, especially. There could be some implications for the HRW wheat crop, I think. We've also got an addition to the dryness. You've got this freeze or frost event that's forecasted for this coming weekend. And there are a lot of areas of the corn belt that are going to see freezing temperatures. So there's talk about emergence issues. There's also talk about the potential for switching away from corn and towards soybeans, or maybe replants of acres that were corn and them being replanted in soybeans.”

Vaclavik doesn’t see these weather concerns immediately impacting markets, but says they are worth watching for farmers and commodity marketers.