World Grain - September 2019 - 72

FEATURE

WILD WEATHER
FAILS TO DRIVE PRICES HIGHER
Despite weather extremes, futures markets have remained relatively steady

by Drew Lerner

072_WG_Sep19_Weather.indd 72

the reality in August when drought-like conditions
in the heart of the Midwest gave way to timely rain,
and crop conditions began to improve.
Several weeks of dryness during early to midsummer in the heart of the U.S. Midwest stressed
some of the poorly established summer crops, and
for a while raised the potential for production failures. However, it never got hot. Once again, despite
the advice of some meteorologists, the solar cycle
provided a cool finish to the summer, which bought
stressed crops some much needed time so that when
August rainfall evolved, plants were still viable to
develop aggressively.
Percent of normal precipitation in U.S. for Aug. 1-28, 2019

Percent of normal precipitation in U.S. for July 2019

World Weather

ow many days have gone by since the word
"weather" fell from your lips? How many
times in the past week have you heard the news
wire services use weather as the cause for adversity
somewhere in the world? Weather still has to be the
most often discussed, feared and celebrated subject
matter impacting the human condition. Sometimes
weather gets falsely accused for things unexplained
and it is always on the forefront of agricultural commodity traders' and farmers' minds.
The past few months have brought on a new slew
of weather extremes that might have had a greater influence in the world marketplace in a different year.
It is amazing all of the extremes that occurred in the
past few months and yet commodity futures prices
are not far from the doldrums of earlier this year.
Weather was responsible for some scares around
the world and a short-term run up in market futures
prices. But after all of the extremes had been experienced, weather cannot be blamed for where we are in
the futures markets relative to earlier this year.
We are now entering the final one-third of 2019,
and if it finishes out half as exciting as the first twothirds of this year, we will still not be bored. The
year began quite cold and wet in North America. The
wet bias delayed the onset of planting in the spring,
but it was not until mid-May that suddenly it was
realized that the weather was not allowing farmers
into their U.S. fields, and the same was happening in
southeastern Canada while the Canada Prairies were
dealing with a third year of drought and later-thanusual frost and freeze events prolonging the start
of aggressive planting. In North America, the wet
winter and spring set the stage for the following few
weeks of fear and concern because if it had not been
for the delayed planting, U.S. crop production this
summer would have been huge due to timely rainfall
and no excessive heat. As it turns out, that became

September 2019 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

9/9/2019 2:02:43 PM

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World Grain - September 2019

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