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Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt, with me, Mike Howell, an eKonomics podcast 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, news, and issues. Helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
(00:38):
Well, hello again, listeners. Welcome back to The Dirt. We’re glad everyone’s joining back in today and we’ve got a regular on the show joining us in today, Eric Snodgrass, an agriculture meteorologist with Nutrien Ag Solutions. Eric, welcome back to the Dirt.
Eric Snodgrass (00:51):
Yeah. Thanks for having me back on. I’m looking forward to this.
Mike Howell (00:54):
Eric, I think the last time we had you on the show, we were talking about the Mississippi River, and the Mississippi River was about to go dry. I think things have changed just a little bit. Last time I crossed it, it looked like it was bank full and we had replenished a lot of that water.
Eric Snodgrass (01:07):
Yeah. And what’s interesting about the setup on the Mississippi now is, you’re right, back in what November, December, we were looking at very, very low water levels in Mississippi. At one point in early November it was something like 12 feet below low stage, and all of that was from October and September, all that dry weather.
(01:24):
Well, you get into the end of December through much of January, there’s a tonne of rain on the lower Mississippi Valley and it just filled it back up and now the interesting situation is this, the river was actually at action stage about a week ago, which meant that the water was actually quite high in it, not yet to flood, but at action stage at Memphis.
(01:42):
And I was just looking today, when you think about how much snow is on the headwaters of the Mississippi River right now, up there in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, we’ve got up to 10 inches of liquid in the snow pack, which means when that melts it’s got to go somewhere. And typically, because the ground’s frozen up there, it goes into the river system, which means we could be looking at going from near record lows in the fall to spring flooding on the same river system. It’s pretty amazing.
Mike Howell (02:03):
Wow. I knew the snow had to melt and come down the river, but we were hoping that that takes a gradual process and doesn’t all melt at one time. I’ve got a lot of friends that farm up and down the Mississippi River and that’s one thing they’re always nervous about is that spring thaw, and these crops down in the South will get up and we can have corn go underwater, this knee tall corn. Not something we like to see happen.
Eric Snodgrass (02:24):
Yeah. And I’ll tell you when you compare it to last year, we have more snow pack in the Northern Plains in the upper Midwest than we did. So, there is certainly going to be the chance for this to be an issue. And on top of that, most of the long range forecasts looking out there keep much of the Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Valley wetter than average through early spring.
(02:40):
I would say right now we’re looking at a spring flood issue that just needs to be monitored. It could all happen at a good timing where it doesn’t get out of the banks and get into some of those low-lying areas, which can be very productive. But I just want to let folks know that, here in mid-March, I’m watching it very carefully.
Mike Howell (02:54):
As much as we hate to see the floods coming, we are thankful that we did get a lot of that snow to replenish this soil moisture. I know we’ve had a bad drought across much of the country and Canada as well and needed to get that water table replenished. So, it looks like we accomplished that this winter.
Eric Snodgrass (03:09):
We started off on December 1st with about 86% of the lower 48 in some form of drought, either abnormally dry all the way up to exceptional drought. And throughout winter that number is now whittled down here in the middle of March, it’s down around 52%, so that’s a huge improvement.
(03:24):
Usually we don’t think about drought breaking in winter, but this was one of those winters where it was so mild East for most of winter, there was plenty of rain and some snow and it got into the soil. So that’s good, the soil wasn’t just locked up frozen. But there’s still quite a bit of drought that runs North-South throughout the plains. In the Northern Plains, there’s snow sitting on top of that drought, which means we’re going to undo some of it. But parts of the Central and Southern Plains, going from Western Kansas and Oklahoma, Texas, parts of Eastern Colorado and Mexico, that area is still just incredibly dry and of major concern going forward because we need spring rains to undo that drought.
(03:56):
It’s kind of funny to say it this way, but I don’t want it completely undone, and the reason for that is if you want to completely wipe out the drought that’s in the Western Plains, it would be historic flooding. I mean, to balance it out you’d have to have that much water. We just need to have enough to get a new crop established and we need to have enough here to help with the winter. We need to have enough just to buy time to when we get into more maybe regular summer thunderstorm activity in that area.
(04:19):
But just to give you an example, you think about California, what got them out of drought? Historic flooding in January and now in March, and so that’s sometimes how it ends. It ends with a bang. So we certainly don’t want to see that happen for the plains.
Mike Howell (04:30):
Yeah. I’ve always heard that one extreme follows another and it seems like that’s the way it happened in California this year. I’ve been keeping up on Twitter, I haven’t had a chance to get out into the plains in the last few months, but I saw one image that really shocked me on Twitter.
(04:43):
Somebody had put a picture of their rain gauge there out in West Kansas and it had four inches of dirt in it, said that that was their rainfall for the week and that’s pretty astonishing when you start filling the rain gauge with soil.
(04:54):
Eric, what can we expect going forward? We’ve talked a little bit about what happened during the winter months, what can we expect as we’re getting into planting season now?
Eric Snodgrass (05:01):
There’s a lot of question, are we going to be able to fill those rain gauges with water out there? Because I saw that same picture, and part of me goes, “Did he fill that up on his own or did the sand actually blow in there?” Because they had, since the beginning of the new year, six large dust storms that went across the Western Plains. Six big ones.
(05:15):
Well, the most important factor going forward is that we’ve lost La Niña. For the last three years we’ve had a La Niña signal, it was pretty strong last year during spring and summer and that just drove the really dry conditions throughout the plains and throughout parts of the Western Corn Belt, and then certainly made it quite bad out in the west and in California. Well, that’s gone. That whole factor’s gone and what that means is we tend to just have better, what we call, zonal float.
(05:37):
That means a jet stream does a better job of moving West and East rather than building up in big ridges that get stuck in all sorts of places. So, overall you’d say, “Well, what does this look like for this upcoming spring and summer?” It looks like we’re going to have routine weather systems.
(05:50):
Unfortunately through the rest of March it’s going to be pretty cold with some of that. There’s some warmer weather happening East of the Mississippi, but we still have a pretty cold signal coming through here in the rest of March. But when those insurance states pass and folks start going after it into the month of April, I think some windows are going to open up, especially in the Western Corn Belt.
(06:07):
But I don’t think we’ll be able to fully cure the drought that’s in the plains. I also think that the Eastern Corn Belt will have relatively tight planting windows due to some wetter conditions and I’m also expecting a pretty active severe weather season from the Southern Plains into the Mid-South, the South and Southeast, and a lot of that’s based upon the net position of the jet stream where it is right now.
(06:27):
There’s also a lot of warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which just means there’s just more energy and heat transport and lower atmosphere coming out of the Gulf of Mexico. And you combine that with an active jet stream and it just tends to rip off more storms.
(06:38):
Shoot, last night they had four inch diameter hail in Texas. And so we just think about what that might be looking like going forward here throughout the month of April, May, and into early June.
Mike Howell (06:47):
And you just nailed my forecast here at home today. We’re seeing thunderstorms and chance of tornadoes and it’s a little bit early in the year to be seeing that. But in my part of the world we’ve been unseasonably warm since about mid-December. We got really cold in December, but it has warmed up. I’ve already had to mow my grass twice this year and it keeps staying warm. We do have a cold front coming in behind this thunderstorm today.
(07:10):
Eric, you mentioned that you don’t think we’re going to get rid of the drought. How much longer do you think this is going to take before we can get that behind us? Something bigs going to have to happen it looks like.
Eric Snodgrass (07:20):
I don’t think we’re going to see a whole lot of widespread drought development again this summer. There’s no indications as of mid-March for something like that happening. But like I said, to completely cure that drought in the plains is going to take just a lot of routine rain and that’s going to be a challenging to get because the plains, it’s in a rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains. It’s quite challenging to get that moisture there.
(07:38):
If you said make it perfect and bring rain to that area, I’d say, “We did one part of it, we got rid of La Niña,” but there’s still quite a bit of warm water that’s in the North Pacific. We call that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation when there’s a bunch of warm water between Alaska and Hawaii, you tend to get a ridge there in summer and there tends to be another ridge kind of in the Western Plains in summer.
(07:57):
If I could get rid of that and put a bunch of cold water there that would tell me that the atmosphere is behaving in a way that’s going to provide better moisture to the Central Plains going forward. We do have to be on the lookout because it is going to be likely going to be an El Niño like summer that we could see some heat in the Northwestern United States, not the Northwestern Corn Belt, the Northwestern us. I’m talking about Montana and Idaho and Oregon and Washington, and we could also see at pretty sizable Bermuda High that sits over Bermuda, which means we could pump in between that bunch of moisture, but on either side it could be looking at some drier risk.
(08:30):
Big question marks still remain about what this upcoming summer’s going to be, but I’ll tell you compared to a year ago on nearly every long range forecast model we’re suggesting hot dry conditions West of the Mississippi last year. They’re not doing that this year, so there’s a good signal on all of this.
Mike Howell (08:45):
That’s great news, Eric. Let’s talk a little bit about the rest of the world. I know they’re harvesting South of the equator now. I see pictures of the harvest going on in Argentina and Brazil right now. Looks like they’re having a good crop. What kind of weather impacts are they having?
Eric Snodgrass (09:00):
The soybean crop in Brazil was huge. That’s their first crop and they increased acreage. I think I heard a number around 6.7 million acres this year. So for reference, that’s as though they just added this year a half of an Illinois soybean crop, just brand new, just in the ground.
(09:15):
Where there were problems was with a little bit of harvest delay, crop was just still green and still wet, and so it hadn’t started to dry out, so that slowed them down North and then in Central Brazil it was incredibly wet for the last about 45 to 60 days. It’s just now turning dry there in Central Brazil where they’re going to be able to harvest, but they’re really late on that.
(09:33):
Safrinha gone in late, the Safrinha corn crop, but as long as the monsoon doesn’t run out, being a few weeks late isn’t a problem, but if the monsoon slows down at the middle of April versus the end of April, the beginning of May, then that crop could finish under dryer conditions.
(09:47):
But I’ll tell you right now it is raining like mad in Monte Grosso, so there’s plenty of moisture coming into that area, which means that’s 35% of their growing area right there is going to get the moisture.
(09:57):
Problems are in Argentina, and even though there’s some decent moisture coming into Argentina now, you go back over the last four months, we have some places that are in record drought. Didn’t matter if you planted early or late crop was hit by heat, it was hit by drought conditions, and don’t forget on February the 18th, there was patchy frost along the Paraná River basin down there. They went from high temperatures about 105 to a patchy frost event back to 105 degrees Fahrenheit all within about 15 days.
(10:23):
Argentina has taken a beating this year and it’s been a major news headline except for the fact that Brazil’s been producing so much in excess of historical numbers, I think Argentina would’ve been a big story otherwise.
Mike Howell (10:34):
You mentioned their increase in production and I think a lot of that increase is because of what’s going on in Europe and that seems like that conflict isn’t never going to end. It sure went on a lot longer than I thought it would. What’s going on in Europe? Are they getting any weather over that way? Are they going to be able to get a crop planted this year?
Eric Snodgrass (10:49):
I think if you’re talking about Eastern Europe and Ukraine and maybe even the Russian wheat belts right now, I don’t see any red flags showing up in terms of what could possibly be a problem with spring precipitation or spring temperatures. In fact, they’re quite mild right now.
(11:02):
Remember they’re like us. They still have a while to go before they typically have their last frost. That typically happens at some point in May, but I don’t see any issues there. Western Europe was a bit of a different story. The Iberian Peninsula, that’s where Spain and Portugal are, plus France, parts of Germany and even Great Britain, very, very dry this winter and these recent rains that are coming through that area are going to be critical to the success of the crop.
(11:25):
But it was also very mild throughout Europe this past winter. Snow pack was lower throughout the mountains that run West to East like the Alps and other mountain ranges, which means that irrigation waters may not be as plentiful as they have been in the past. We may see some trouble coming out of Europe, but right now, especially with the rain coming into Western Europe overall it’s kind of evening things out and not necessarily making it for that bad of a go of it starting into spring, but it was very dry in Western Europe throughout much of this winter.
Mike Howell (11:50):
Eric, I guess the other big area that we always talk about is Australia. How are the conditions in Australia? I know they kind of took it on the chin at planting time last fall, but have things improved for them?
Eric Snodgrass (12:01):
The Australians love La Niña, and the reason for that is when there’s a La Niña it tends to rain and there was some places like you talked about that had a tremendous amount of rain. Over the whole of the last three years because of this La Niña and its duration, but I just was releasing some content for them earlier this week and I had to break the news that with La Niña gone and El Niño returning, the chances of it being hotter and drier into fall, they’re going into fall right now, and then into their winter time period has increased.
(12:28):
They do a lot of winter crops down there. The fact that it’s going to be going dry during planting may be a bit of an issue. Now, there’s plenty of soil moisture today right now, but it’s whether or not the dry conditions going into April, May, and June start to cause problems for them.
(12:41):
They’re going to be worried about El Niño until this next one’s done, so it’s kind of funny. We love it and they hate it and it’s just the way that the flow goes across the Pacific Ocean that determines that.
(12:51):
By the way that La Niña letting go is part of the reason why we are possibly going to be seeing a pretty deep into the Southern United States frost event this upcoming weekend, and it’s certainly coming right through your house soon. It’s been through here in Illinois where I am. I’m bundled up. I even had a space heat run in today because my house didn’t warm up as fast as the temperature dropped outside and we got a cold snap here coming that’s going to get pretty far into the South.
(13:15):
I was just talking with some guys that already got corn going, got soybeans going, and they’re like, “Hey, we can’t have a frost in this part of Louisiana or this part of Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia.” And unfortunately we’re going to see that frost line dip pretty far to the South, so it might be some replant because of that.
Mike Howell (13:28):
We do have a good bit of corn that’s starting to emerge, especially down here in the South. It’s not very tall yet, and a frost this time of year doesn’t really concern me as long as it warms back up pretty quickly after that, that growing point is still going to be below the soil and it can recover from that pretty quickly. Where we get into trouble is when it gets cold and stays cold and doesn’t let it catch back up.
Eric Snodgrass (13:48):
If you’re in the West, it’s going to get cold and stake cold. I’m talking about way West, but I think down in the mid south and south, we’re going to get a decent recovery. It’s not going to go over hot, but it’s certainly going to be an issue with trying to keep the temps up, get those GDS accumulating, and have a good start to this season.
Mike Howell (14:05):
Eric, we’ve talked about a lot of stuff today. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your insights with us. You have any closing comments, anything you want people to take home from this message today?
Eric Snodgrass (14:14):
Yeah, I do, and here’s the big thing I want folks thinking about. It’s mid-March when we’re doing this recording, and there’s a lot of folks out there right now that are making big claims about the upcoming growing season, about major risk of drought or flood or hurt, lots of different things. It’s just what happens this time of year. I just want people to step back and take just a nice easy look at what’s going on and not really buy into some of the snake oil that’s being sold right now.
(14:37):
Just be prepared. It’s weather. It changes pretty quickly. We know how this all works and I just want folks to really have an even keeled look at it because I’ve heard some bold claims recently about what’s going to happen this summer, and I got to remind folks if people really knew what was going on that far out, they wouldn’t tell a single soul about it, right? That’d be worth a gold mine right there. We just need to be careful with what we’re hearing this time of year.
Mike Howell (14:59):
That’s exactly right, and I want to remind all of our listeners that Eric puts out a daily newsletter. Eric, if you will, tell us about that newsletter and how they can sign up if they haven’t already.
Eric Snodgrass (15:08):
Every morning I just try to write a piece that goes out via email, usually about 7:30, 7:45 Central Time. I also includes a recorded video just to me kind of keeping you up to date on what’s going on in the weather. I call it the Weather Intelligence Report, and it gives you access to all the tools I’ve built and all the stuff that we’ve got going on here at Nutrien, and it’s just designed to get information out.
(15:26):
And I tell folks, I say, “Listen, if you don’t need to know about the weather today,” which most people in ag do, right? “But if you don’t need to know, just delete it. I’ll do another one tomorrow and you can read that one.” But I just try to keep on top of all the bigger moving pieces so that you know, never feel caught off guard.
(15:40):
The websites just info.nutrien.com/snodgrass_weather. We’ll make sure that folks can get signed up that want to have access to that. Plus, I have built a website for Nutrien. It’s called agweather.com, ag-wx.com. That’s the abbreviation for weather, W-X. That’s Morse code for weather, actually. So ag-wx.com, great place to go to get content.
Mike Howell (16:03):
Eric, we sure appreciate it. I’m going to ask you one last question, kind of put you on the spot. Give us a hurricane prediction for this coming year. That’s something we always have to worry about down here.
Eric Snodgrass (16:13):
My hurricane prediction is nowhere near as high as it was last year, even though last year did not reach the expectations a lot of us had, but with an El Niño possibly coming up, it tends to increase the wind shear and you increase that wind shear across the Atlantic and it tends to slow some of these things down and dismantle them, but you know as well as I do, it only takes one, right?
(16:32):
You could have a benign season, but that one comes up the gut of the Mississippi and dumps all that rain and rocks Louisiana, and we got problems. But right now I’d say that average to maybe slightly below average hurricane season coming up this year. The only thing that would make me wrong right now is that the ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and the Gulf are hot right now compared to average. Very, very warm.
(16:53):
I don’t like to see that because that’s the energy source for these big tropical cyclings. So hey, you jumped way ahead there. That’s August, September, October, but we’ll be looking out for it.
Mike Howell (17:03):
It’s never too early to start thinking about that time of year. They can come at any time. Eric, we really appreciate you being with us today. I know you’ve given these growers a lot of information that can help them down the road, and we’ll have you back on here in a few months after we get this crop planted and figure out what’s going to happen for the rest of the year.
Eric Snodgrass (17:19):
That sounds good. I’ll look forward to it.
Mike Howell (17:20):
Listeners, we want to thank you for joining us this week and it’s time now we’re going to transition into our second segment where we talk about a famous person in agriculture.
(17:32):
This week we’re going to talk about George Washington. Now, most everybody knows that George Washington was the first President of the United States, and his home was in Mount Vernon, Virginia, and that’s still a big tourist attraction. You can go by and see a lot of the things that he did there at Mount Vernon.
(17:47):
One of the first large scale wheat farmers in the US was George Washington, and he farmed a little over 3,000 acres of cultivated ground spread out over several miles there. After the American Revolution, educated and wealthy farmers, including Washington, became interested in agriculture reform, and in 1875, they founded the Philadelphia Society for Promotion of Agriculture, and it was the first organisation of its kind in the United States.
(18:15):
Now, Washington believed that it was a responsibility of the wealthy farmers to undertake the experimentation because failures were going to be inevitable and the losses would have to be absorbed while these new technologies were being perfected.
(18:29):
Washington’s precise record keeping was one of the first steps on the path to agriculture improvements and innovation, and over time, his agriculture record keeping grew increasingly detailed and inquisitive. In fact, they were almost to the quality of some journals.
(18:43):
His experiments included developing a seven year crop rotation that focused on wheat as the principle cash crop, and this rotation also included corn for domestic purposes and legumes that he thought would improve the soil health.
(18:57):
Now, one of the early inventions that George Washington is credited with as a 16 sided barn that was used to thresh grain. Now, at the time, farmers actually had to lay the wheat on the ground in a circle and they would thresh the grain by treading or leading horses around in a circle on top of the grain. To stomp out the chaff,
(19:17):
Washington was able to take this barn and design it so that the top floor, they could lay the grain out in a circle and let the animals walk around that, and then it would fall through the levels of the barn and separate out the grain from the chaff.
(19:29):
He also built a state-of-the-art grist mill that could grind 5,000 pounds of flour a day, and a lot of that design is still used today in some grist mills around the country.
(19:39):
In 1791, Washington discovered a new process which could move both wheat and flour through the grist mill, eliminating the need for manual labour.
(19:48):
We think about George Washington as being the father of our country, and he did a lot of great things as president, but don’t forget about the contributions that George Washington made to agriculture.
(19:57):
He also, while president, signed the first patent in the United States, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about that in an upcoming episode.
(20:05):
So until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
