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Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt, with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podKast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by eKonomics.com, farming’s go-to informational resource. I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research, use, and issues helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in. Well, hello again, everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. This is the middle of the summer. It’s July 21st, as we’re recording this episode, and I don’t know about where you all are, but it is awful hot down in the South. I know a lot of people are experiencing a lot of dry weather these days. Right here where I am, we’re not getting that dry weather, though. We’re getting temperatures in the mid-nineties, and we’ve got high humidity to go along with that. Fortunately for us, we’ve been getting these rains just about every afternoon.
(01:08)
In fact, I’ve been trying to cut hay for a month now and I can’t get my hay cut because it keeps raining every day. Here to talk with us a little bit more about that is Eric Snodgrass with Nutrient Ag Solutions. Eric is actually travelling this morning. He’s going from one of his many destinations to the next, and we’re trying to catch him in-between. We wanted to go ahead and get Eric on and see what he could tell us about the weather. Eric, how are you this morning?
Eric Snodgrass (01:33):
Well, I’m glad we didn’t reschedule this because talking today is probably the most important for us, given some of the recent changes that have been going on that are going to help some of those really, really drought-parched areas. But honestly, for where you are, I still think we’re going to keep some of those storms on, so I think you’re going to see those tight windows for getting that cutting of hay done, and some of those untimely rains might hit you when that’s kind of sitting in those windows.
Mike Howell (01:57):
Yeah, we’ve been trying. We watch the weather. We’ve get a 50% chance of rain every afternoon and we decided it’s better to leave it standing than to cut it and let it get rained on every day. You just don’t know what to do.
Eric Snodgrass (02:07):
I completely agree, but listen, this is the great thing about this upcoming forecast. It’s been shifting around all week, giving us better and better ideas on where it’s going to go, and this is what we’ve seen change lately. Now throughout all of April, May, June, and the beginning of July, we saw in the Pacific Ocean, in the Gulf of Alaska, a deep trough of low pressure. What that did was, that sent the jet stream right into the Pacific Northwest and through the Canadian Prairie, and it avoided much of the Mid-South early, and then it slid over the last 10 days over the Southern Plains, into the Four Corners states. That’s where the reach has been. It’s been extremely hot. Some places down there have spent over 100 hours, just in the month of July, with their heat index values over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s been in the Lower Mississippi River Valley, the western parts of the Mid-South, getting into the Southern Plains.
(03:01)
Now, they’re still hot. It’s going to stay hot for the next few days through the weekend, not cooling them down, but the changes that are happening, that are going on in the North Pacific Ocean are going to start to draw more of that heat into the Western United States. And if it gets drawn west, we tend to get more frequent fronts that slide through the Midwest, hitting the Corn Belt, slide through the Mid-South, getting toward the Cotton Belt, delivering some very timely rain over some drought-stricken areas. And when I say drought-stricken, it’s the driest in parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, and Kansas. Some climate reporting districts in those states are having their driest last 40 days going all the way back to 1893. To see this shift in the pattern, if you can hear a little excitement in my voice, I’ve been so desperate to be able to see that change around, and that’s going to just bring in some moisture. Now, it doesn’t cure the longer-term problem, but it brings in some relief, and that’s what we’re looking out for over the next 10 to 15 days.
Mike Howell (04:01):
Eric, it sounds like the possibility of that rain in the Midwest could be huge. I remember my grandparents talking about $1 million rain and they would get that rain at just the right time to make that crop. And this could be a rainfall event that could be in the billions of dollars, if it hits the Corn Belt at just the right time.
Eric Snodgrass (04:17):
It does. We’ve been kind of keeping an eye on and a mind about what we think this potential size of the U.S. corn crop is going to be, and due to a late plant and some early season drought stress, and that drought stress was in the Eastern Corn Belt, it was in the Western Corn Belt. It was throughout a lot of the Corn Belt. That drought stress peeled back what our original estimates were by about four bushel an acre for the national number. Just my own calculations here, I have a little model set up to do it. We’re looking at about a 176.8 national yield. Well, if, now this is a big if, if these rains we’re forecasting here do not materialize, I put in the model, if they don’t, what they did was it pulled back yields another three bushel nationally. That would be huge, because what that would do to our stocks-to-use ratio, what that would do to our ends, I mean, it would just be the wrong number.
(05:08)
We’d be too short on the supply side. But these rains, when included, keep that number steady rather than letting it decline. The damage that’s been done for corn that’s grown in Oklahoma, and in Texas, and in the Lower Mississippi River Valley, and in Kansas, that damage is done. We’re not going to undo that, but reviving the Midwest crop with a good rain, especially after Western Iowa’s deep into the nineties right now, we have 100-degree heat in St. Louis. I mean, we need this rain to come in late this weekend and then into next week. It’s going to save a crop if it materializes. And I got my fingers crossed that the forecast models have it right.
Mike Howell (05:45):
Well, we’re definitely hoping for that. Last time we visited, you warned us about this extreme drought, or the probability of this drought. It looks like that did materialize, but hopefully, there’s a break in it coming soon. You mentioned that the jet stream had shifted and that was going to move those high temperatures further west. What about when we get into the west of the Rockies? What are they looking like? Are they still having the severe droughts?
Eric Snodgrass (06:08):
Yeah, and it’s because it’s the middle of the dry season. While the Pacific Northwest is probably not going to be too negatively impacted by this heat. In other words, they were so far behind on accumulating heat units early in the season, that these folks are probably happy to get some warmer weather in place, and it’s only going to be about five to 10 degrees above normal. Now, what it will do in the Pacific Northwest is start to increase the fire threat. We’ve seen here in the last week, some big fires erupting in parts of Montana and Idaho, just ripping smoke across the northern part of the United States. In fact, in my home state of Illinois, I was looking at some satellite imagery this morning, things are looking pretty hazy yesterday and today. All of that is from smoke from this big fire in Idaho.
(06:50)
But California’s another story. Throughout California, remember, they didn’t get the snow they needed at the end of the season. I’m talking about January, February, and March. And Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, their two biggest reservoirs, are currently sitting between 30 and 45% of full pool. And that water’s got to last all the way into October. And the reality of it is, is that they’re short. If you start to take the evaporation rates across the state of California and the Valley, especially, up over three to four inches a week. That’s what happens when it’s 105 degrees. You get evaporation rates of three and a half inches a week. They’re going to start to see some significant strain on their water resources and that’s not good, but it is shifting the temperature issues in the United States away from a spot that’s been just devastated, the Southern Plains, over to a place that’s vulnerable. Now, that’s California. The West United States is going to have to be on the lookout for what this pattern means over the next probably 30 to 90 days. That’s what we’re worried about for the West.
Mike Howell (07:52):
Eric, you mentioned the evaporation rates and that kind of hits home. My wife called the other day and I was out travelling. She called and said, “The swimming pool’s low.” I said, “Well turn the water on and fill the swimming pool back up.” And that was no problem. Well, about three days later she called again and said, “Hey, the swimming pool’s low. Do we have a leak in the swimming pool?” And I said, “Yeah, we’ve got a leak and it’s going straight up.” That’s the same thing that’s happening in my swimming pool. We’re getting these hot summer days and it’s evaporating quicker than the rainfall’s putting it back in. We’ve been getting probably a quarter of an inch to a half inch of rain every day.
(08:23)
But the evaporation rate is quicker than the amount of rainfall is coming out of the sky right now, so we’re having to add a little bit of water to the swimming pool every week. It’s the same theory when we’re looking at a field. That corn field has only got so much water out there and right now, it’s in high demand and it’s pulling that water quicker than it’s getting resupplied.
Eric Snodgrass (08:41):
I completely agree. I was talking to some friends in Texas that worked for [inaudible 00:08:45] yesterday and they were like, “Oh, it’s raining. This is fantastic.” They got a couple of good storms that came through. Promise, you hit the next day with 105-degree heat, you lose 80% of that water, it’s gone. Just think about this. You’ve probably heard a lot about Lake Mead lately, but I’ll just give you a number about the Desert Southwest. You know the Bellagio pools that are there in Las Vegas? They’re eight acres. Every day, when it hits 100 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the desert around Las Vegas, they will evaporate 120,000 gallons of water a day, so these evaporation rates are no joke at all.
Mike Howell (09:21):
Okay, Eric, well we appreciate that information. Let’s move to the other side of the country. What about the East Coast? What can those guys expect? On the East Coast?
Eric Snodgrass (09:28):
There had been some drought that was developing in New England, and there was drought earlier in the season in the Mid-Atlantic and Carolinas, but a lot of storms lately in the Carolinas have kind of eased drought pressure, and a lot of the crops there look really good. We just had a big field day out there, saw some pictures, lot of good-looking crops. Better rains are coming toward New England, as well. I got head up to New York at the end of August to talk to some corn growers up there, and I have a feeling when I get back, those folks out of New York and Pennsylvania, they’re going to be looking at much better conditions than they had seen earlier in the season. There’s better news for the coast than what we had had up to this point.
Mike Howell (10:03):
Well, that’s great news. I’ve got a lot of friends up and down the East Coast and I’ve been hearing about how dry it was early in the year, and I’m glad they’re finally getting some relief from that. Hope we can get a good crop in for those guys this year. Let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about some other parts of the world. I see every day about the drought situation going on in Europe and the extreme heat over there. What can you tell us about Europe?
Eric Snodgrass (10:25):
Well, just like the Southern Plains of the United States, they’ve had multiple heat waves this summer. They’ve hit everything from Spain, to France, Germany, and even parts of Ukraine. And that Ukrainian crop is already fragile due to the conflict there. And here we are putting some weather stress on top of it. They had temperatures that were in the UK that were all the way up there around 104, 105 degrees Fahrenheit. And the evaporation stress, like we’ve talked about in the Plains, has been hit in parts of Europe, as well. This is what La Nina does. It can really rob the momentum of the jet stream and put the middle part of the United States and the middle part of Europe, at the same time, under drought and heat stress.
Mike Howell (11:02):
That just sets up this perfect storm that everybody’s been talking about, the bad weather conditions in the major growing regions of the world. It just continues to hamper this supply and demand situation that we’ve got going on. It’s going to keep supply really tight, it sounds lik, for the foreseeable future anyway. If we move south of the equator, I know it’s their wintertime right now, they’re probably just getting geared up to start planting here in the next month or so. What’s their winter looking like? Are they getting ready for a good season, or are they having trouble south of the equator, as well?
Eric Snodgrass (11:31):
We got two spots south of the equator we’re going to watch, and they’ve got two entirely different stories. Now, if you go to Australia, folks in Australia are pretty happy with me right now in the forecast I keep giving them, because La Nina gives them rain that they need, and they’ve had it, they’ve had plenty of moisture. They’re not at drought. But in South America, we’re in the dry season. It’s normal, their winter, dry season. But this La Nina has got a lot of southern Brazilian and Argentinian farmers concerned. And that’s because if we see La Nina persisting into September, and October, November, which we do, that increases the risk.
(12:05)
It doesn’t make it a guarantee, but it increases the risk of drought problems happening in the southern Brazilian states, which could slow the planting there, because they got to wait on the monsoon to show up before they get into those fields to get the beans planted. There is risk happening in South America, and the globe, the whole planet, needs South America to produce a big crop to bring up this balance sheet. And I’m telling you, if this La Nina plays out, there could be risk that, that crop couldn’t be as big as anticipated.
Mike Howell (12:32):
Well, that’s a pretty scary thought. If we have another blow to this supply curve, it’s going to get really serious, really quickly. Hopefully, we can get a break in some of this and get some higher yields coming in across the whole world. We sure need that at this time. Eric, is there anything else you have on your radar that we need to talk about?
Eric Snodgrass (12:49):
Well, the two areas I’m watching carefully around the world are coming out of the tropics, versus the subcontinent of India. We’ve got a really strong Indian monsoon this year, which has delivered a tremendous amount of rain and hit their cotton production pretty hard. It’s like the opposite effect of what’s going on in the Southern Plains of the United States. India has had their cotton industry hit hard by too much water. The other thing is, we’re moving toward August. August is the month where the hurricane season really begins to ramp up and we’re going to likely see another hurricane season with above average activity. The whole of the Gulf Coast and the East Coast needs to be prepared for what could be another active hurricane season, and all of that spurred along by what’s happening with La Nina.
Mike Howell (13:31):
You could have gone all day without making that last comment. We’re sitting here close to the 1st of August, and it definitely is time, and we just haven’t had a whole lot of hurricane activity yet, and we were kind of letting our guard down a little bit. But the one person that we in the South hate to see this time of year is Jim Cantore, so if you have any connections with Jim, go ahead and handcuff him. Keep him in Atlanta the rest of the summer. We don’t need him showing up in our backyard.
Eric Snodgrass (13:57):
I know it. Yeah, when you start having storm chasers or The Weather Channel showing up in your hometown, it’s time to head to the basement, or it’s time to leave.
Mike Howell (14:02):
I’ve actually had the opportunity to meet Jim on an airplane, flying out of Gulfport several years ago, but we have a lot of respect for him, as well, and he keeps us on our toes down here when we need that situation. I hope he doesn’t listen to this and get offended by some of the comments we just made. But, we really like Jim and he keeps us on top of things. We just hate to see him show up. Okay, Eric, here’s one out of left field for you, but we’ve got to have a weather forecast for next weekend at Indianapolis. The big race is coming up there in Indianapolis, and for our listeners, if you happen to be in Indianapolis, look us up. The Dirt will be live in Indianapolis next week. We will be there recording a podcast, but we’re sure hoping Eric can give us a good weather forecast for Indianapolis next week.
Eric Snodgrass (14:44):
You know, I’ll be there, too, so I’m excited to see those races. And here’s some good news, we haven’t yet pinned down exactly where that front is going to be next Saturday, okay? There is a better chance though that we are not going to be seeing the extreme heat we’re going to have before then, so that’s good. But it is late July and it doesn’t matter. We could go in with a dry forecast, you get one storm to pop on the heat of the day, and your whole race can be ruined. We have to keep a lookout for those pop-up storms. But we’ll see if these fronts can get south of us by the time we get into that weekend there on July 30th.
Mike Howell (15:18):
Okay, Eric, great news. We know that’s a chance in the summertime in the afternoon. We just hope we can get a good weekend in. Really looking forward to that, and I hope I get to see you up there next weekend.
Eric Snodgrass (15:28):
Yeah. Me, too. That’ll be a lot of fun.
Mike Howell (15:31):
Listeners, again, thank you for joining us this week. Really want to encourage everyone to tune in again next week. I think we’re going to have a really exciting episode coming live from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We’ll have some guests on that we typically wouldn’t have on the program, so stay tuned for next week. And if you happen to be at the race next weekend, look us up. We’d love to visit with you. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
