In our weekly series From the Furrow, host Mike McGinnis and fellow grain geeks shed light on current market conditions and how grain producers can take action to manage their risk.
This week, Mike is joined by Jon Davis, Chief Meteorologist with Everstream Analytics. How are planting season forecasts shaping up? How soon will farmers be able to get back to the fields? And what’s ahead for the growing season? Mike and Jon discuss those topics and a whole lot more.
Questions or comments? Topics you’d like to hear us discuss? Contact us at Insights@Ever.Ag.
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Egg.
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Hello and welcome to From the Furrow, brought to you by Ever AG Insights. Each week we talk with subject matter experts on news and topics affecting the grain markets. I’m your host, Mike McGuinness. Let’s get started today with a review of the markets on this April 29th, 2024. The pressure is coming in the corn market. Otherwise the soybean market is seeing a bid and we have more pressure in the wheat market.
00;00;38;24 – 00;01;01;03
July corn down three quarters of a cent at 449. July soybeans up $0.09 at 1186. And July wheat taking back some of that rally from the past week, down 13.25 cents at 609. Let’s turn to our guest this week. It’s our privilege to have John Davis, chief meteorologist at ever, stream analytics with us. John, thanks for joining us.
00;01;01;05 – 00;01;03;07
Oh my pleasure. It’s great to be here.
00;01;03;08 – 00;01;20;16
All of the sudden, John, the Midwest planting weather has become very interesting. Of course, we’d like for you to give us a feel for when this might change and give us an outlook, so to speak. Short term and long term. Then the of course, the tornadoes that just ripped through the Midwest last week. We can visit about that as well.
00;01;20;16 – 00;01;39;29
But from our conversations with farmers this week, they are getting a little bit nervous about being able to get back into the field. And we’ll talk about when that might happen for them in just a bit. First off, though, if you could give us a short background on the U.S. and European models that you follow and what are maybe some of the differences?
00;01;40;03 – 00;02;08;12
Yeah. So the U.S. and the European models, those are what we call global forecast models. So in other words, they’re forecasting at a grid point level for all areas of the globe. And those are the two primary global models would be the U.S. that’s done in Washington, D.C. and then the European model, which is done in England. And both of those models, again, have been around for a very long time.
00;02;08;19 – 00;02;26;08
And they use the same basic principles of explaining the atmosphere, you know, through mathematics and physics and being able to forecast at a very, you know, high level and granular level, you know, going out in some cases 15 plus days for all areas of the globe.
00;02;26;11 – 00;02;44;20
Well, I know that the forecasts are updated throughout the day numerous times. I remember being on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. The traders always came alive about 11:00 in the morning because there was some new information coming out at that point. But give us a feel for how often do these forecasts get updated?
00;02;44;21 – 00;03;18;02
Well, that’s changed here quite a bit over the years, and we’ll continue to change as technology changes here over time. So the U.S. models are now issued four times of day, and we have an operational run, and we have the ensemble output and probably don’t care the details of those two. The European is still issued twice a day, but there are plans already to increase the frequency of those issued times, both the U.S. model and the European model over time.
00;03;18;02 – 00;03;37;18
So kind of the days of those models just coming out once or twice a day. Those are long gone, and we probably will be in a situation in the near future where many, many times a day, those models will be updated and, you know, they’ll be available for, you know, the public and meteorologists to use the.
00;03;37;18 – 00;03;47;21
Differences between the U.S. and European models. When you consider those right now. What are those models saying as far as the forecast and what does it look like?
00;03;47;22 – 00;04;22;12
Well, in general, for the forecast coming up, as we look out into the early portion of May, they’re pretty consistent, at least for the Midwest. There’s other areas of the globe, but there’s a big differences. But for the Midwest, the relative consistent. And what they’re forecasting coming up is that especially for the Western Corn Belt, those acres west of the Mississippi River, as well as portions of the Northern Plains, that is the active zone, and so that is the area where you’re going to have more frequent rain systems moving through.
00;04;22;15 – 00;04;50;19
You’re going to have, you know, more field work delays across those locales. And over the next couple of weeks, certainly some slowdown that started over the weekend where some of the big rains that we saw the last two and a half days across portions of the central and western Corn Belt, and again, the Western Corn Belt and the northern Plains, spring wheat country, those are going to be the areas that are the most active and have the most delays in fieldwork operations.
00;04;50;21 – 00;05;09;06
So Meteorologically speaking, what is going on in those areas? Because in Iowa, there were 12 tornadoes reported on Friday. You had tornadoes ripping through Nebraska as well. And this is the area you’re talking about. What seems to be going on in that area right now. What kind of pattern?
00;05;09;07 – 00;05;42;06
Yeah. So from a severe weather standpoint, we had a multi-day severe weather outbreak that started late Thursday, continued through Saturday night and again in the springtime. It’s normal to have severe weather in the U.S. that happens every spring. But this situation was unique. The amount of activity in severe weather that we had in those three days, over 160 tornadoes, hundreds of reports of damaging hail, hundreds of reports of damaging wind that was very unusual.
00;05;42;11 – 00;06;07;10
And it was due to actually a series of systems that moved across the same area over a multi-day period. And then you had this outbreak of severe weather. Heavy rains were one aspect, but hail, tornadic activity, straight line winds, all of those things came together with the focus of that in the plains area, as well as areas of the western portion of the Midwest.
00;06;07;13 – 00;06;36;19
Well, let’s take a look at what’s ahead. First off, short term, I’ve been speaking with farmers across the Midwest this week, and some of them, especially in Illinois, are now very concerned about getting back in on time. Yes, they can plan it fairly fast once they get back in. But the outlook for someone from west central Illinois, for instance, maybe looking at a week of rain or wet conditions and then maybe a couple of days of sunshine, but then rain again, apparently, according to this farmer.
00;06;36;19 – 00;06;42;20
So again, some concerns there with now all of the sudden not being able to be in the field on time.
00;06;42;24 – 00;07;05;27
Right. So west central Illinois is one of the wettest areas right now. Basis the amount of rain they had over the last 72 hours. Other areas didn’t have nearly as much rain for most of the Midwest. Last week was totally dry and so when the rain started last weekend, then most areas have had 7 to 9 days of totally open or dry weather.
00;07;06;03 – 00;07;32;27
And so field work prep and planting activity last week before the rain started were actually quite good. We’ll see how that translates to the numbers that we get on Monday afternoon from the state planting numbers from USDA. As we look ahead, it’s that Western area of the overall Western Corn Belt, you know, west of the river that has the most action and will have the most delays coming up.
00;07;32;29 – 00;07;54;12
We don’t see any areas, our large scale areas that will totally get bogged down. But there are going to be delays. There’s limited periods of any kind of open or fair dry weather across areas of the western Midwest. So the acres that will be the slowest to plant and fields being prepared is going to be the western half of the Corn Belt.
00;07;54;12 – 00;08;18;22
That’s not only the case this week, but it’s also the case next week here overall. So it doesn’t look like there’s any areas of major concern where nothing is going to get done. But certainly there’s going to be some areas that are on the slow side and overall across those zones, then you know they’re going to need a bit drier weather as we go a little bit deeper into May, let’s say the middle portion of May, you know, overall.
00;08;18;28 – 00;08;32;29
Well that sounds good short term, John, what about the month of May. What’s the weather look like for the Corn Belt states? If we’re going to get delayed here towards the end of the month of April and the start of the month of May. What does the rest of the weather look like for the month of May?
00;08;33;00 – 00;09;00;09
Yeah. So as we look ahead, let’s first of all talk about temperatures. Of course, we’ve had some cool weather periodically late March and portions of April. And that did slow some things down because soil temperatures were a little bit too cool to allow germination to take place. That cool weather is done. And so it looks like as we go into May, the pattern is warmer than normal, not only in the Midwest, but across the entire central portion of the country.
00;09;00;09 – 00;09;23;18
So it looks like May will tend to be a warmer than normal month here overall. And generally that’s a good thing. A beneficial thing as to that will tend to allow for steady germination and emergence of the crops as they are planted across the Midwest. As for a moisture situation overall, again, early May, it looks pretty active, kind of what we saw over the weekend.
00;09;23;22 – 00;09;50;06
And so over the first couple of weeks of May, it looks like we will have some delays. Certainly we’ll have some active weather, especially in the western Midwest and portions of the Northern Plains. Again, no areas getting totally bogged down, but certainly some delays in field work operations there. But whereas the eastern Midwest things are actually quite good a little bit later in the month, it does look like things will tend to trend a little bit drier here.
00;09;50;06 – 00;10;20;03
Coming up or less active. So in other words, in the failed work delays that we’re going to have over the next couple of weeks, it does look like later on in May we’ll have better field work conditions, more open weather here overall. And again, that would equate to a planting period for most of the crops overall. That would keep things on a relatively steady pace and keep things pretty normal, if not even a little bit of head of schedule, depending upon the crop that you’re looking at overall.
00;10;20;04 – 00;10;45;13
And when you’re talking about optimum planning dates you mentioned earlier, the forecast updates are changing the seed varieties that are coming out. They’re drought tolerant and can handle some more heat stress. So to speak. Farmers and crop consultants that you talked to, they’re really not sure what is the optimum planting date anymore. Some folks feel like that that may be changing, with the new seed varieties being able to handle a lot more stress.
00;10;45;15 – 00;11;05;27
Now, with that said, we do have, unique weather phenomenon, not unique, but a different phenomenon in the weather pattern that may be showing up in late spring, early summer, the La Nina weather pattern. Can you give us a feel for what that looks like right now? Is that still on pace to arrive in the Midwest around late spring or.
00;11;05;28 – 00;11;29;10
Yeah, it is pretty unique, actually. So we started the year with an El Nino event that was quite strong over the fall and during the winter, and the first 5 or 6 months of this year will be a transition period, going from an El Nino event, warmer than normal water temperatures across the equatorial Pacific to a La Nina event, cold and normal water temperatures across that zone.
00;11;29;14 – 00;11;51;03
And we expect a La Nina event to be in place by the middle to end of summer. July, August, on into the fall period. And that process of going from an El Nino to a La Nina in the first six months of the year, that’s a pretty unique situation and certainly doesn’t happen, has happened in the past, but doesn’t happen, you know, all that often.
00;11;51;03 – 00;11;58;18
So this is going to be the first 6 or 8 months of the year. This is going to be a transition time going from El Nino to La Nina.
00;11;58;18 – 00;12;24;21
Well, what started out as a fairly normal planting season has all of the sudden gotten very interesting in your outlook for more rain and some wet conditions, possibly for the first ten days of May, that will really have some farmers scratching their heads, I’m sure. So we’ll see how the weather plays out. And of course, as you mentioned, it’s really going to be focused in the Western Corn Belt area for the active zone, so to speak.
00;12;24;23 – 00;12;29;25
John Davis, Chief meteorologist at Ever Stream Analytics. Thanks for joining us today, John.
00;12;29;25 – 00;12;30;22
My pleasure.
00;12;30;29 – 00;12;40;24
If you’ve enjoyed listening to From the Furrow, be sure to tell a friend or two and subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thank you to the Ever AG Insights Crew for their work on today’s show.
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