Fundamentally Speaking

Despite a dry August for many of the top corn and soybean producing states, last week USDA again confirmed that the U.S. will produce record yields of both crops with its September projection for the 2024 corn crop at 183.6 bushels per acre (bpa), up 0.3 from the prior month while more surprisingly is soybean yield maintained at a record 53.32 bpa.

We say surprisingly in that corn is often seen as a crop of July and beans August, and while the former was well past its critical reproductive phase, soybeans were in the midst of it last month.

The impact of the warm and dry weather over the past 30 days to the bean crop won't be known until we get deeper into harvest.

Certainly, the recent bounce in prices in part is being attributed to ideas that the absence of moisture for pod fill could be paring the top end yield.

Along these lines, this chart shows the percent of average 2024 August and June August precipitation on the right-hand axis while plotted on the left-hand axis is the difference in degrees Fahrenheit for the average temperatures last month from the average August temperature.

This is for the top corn and soybean states using the period 1895-2024.

Supporting the idea that beans are getting hurt by spate of dry weather more than corn is the fact that the three states here that just grow soybeans of AK, LA and MS saw August rains 44.2%, 44.1% and 71.8% down from their 1895-2024 average and also had well above average August temperatures.

Also, the Texas temperature at 3.8 degrees above average was their third warmest ever with TX precipitation last month also down 56% from average.

We are also seeing KY, OH and TN not only had a dry August but a dry summer as well.

It is no surprise then in the USDA September crop production report that some of the biggest percent declines in the state soybean yield projections from the August figures were seen in AK, OH, KY, TN though LA and MS bucked that trend at least so far.

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