Drought

Scouts on the hard red winter wheat tour reported a discouraging start to the fieldwork, with widespread drought stress and visible damage from recent freezes. “It's not a great picture. It's a very drought-stressed crop,” Aaron Harries of the Kansas Wheat Commission told Brownfield after the fir...

Widespread soaking rains over the past week brought relief to parts of Texas and the Deep South but left large areas still stressed by long-running dryness. The precipitation reduced drought extent across portions of Texas, the lower Mississippi Valley and the Tennessee Valley, even as Se...

The Wheat Quality Council’s Hard Winter Wheat Tour will cross Kansas May 12–14 as the crop faces widespread moisture stress and an early-May freeze in the western third of the state. Participants will drive set routes to evaluate crop condition and measure potential yields across historic wheat a...

Minnesota and other Corn Belt states entered planting season this spring with many producers waiting for fields to dry, and several regional managers report planting is behind where it was a year ago. Drought and dry winds have been particularly severe across Nebraska and the Plains, and this spr...

About 69% of the U.S. winter wheat production area is currently experiencing drought conditions, according to U.S. Wheat Associates, a development market analysts say is supporting higher futures. Dry conditions remain the principal market driver, U.S. Wheat market analyst Luke Muller wrote in hi...

As April ended, more than 61% of U.S. drought of the contiguous United States was in moderate to exceptional drought, a level the U.S. Drought Monitor says is the highest recorded for this time of year since it began tracking conditions. For producers, drought is not just weather...

Planting across parts of the Midwest is running behind typical timelines as farmers wait for fields to dry, with reports from Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois showing slower starts compared with this time last year. Several managers say planting progress in Iowa and Illinois is roughly 30% behind whe...

U.S. winter wheat is sharply affected by dry weather this spring, with U.S. Wheat Associates estimating about 69% under drought across the nation’s winter wheat production area. Wheat futures have moved higher as traders weigh how ongoing dry conditions will affect yields and har...

Midsouth farmers are opening irrigation taps early this spring as a persistent drought has left fields short on soil moisture and slowed crop emergence. Growers in Arkansas report running center pivots and other systems to get corn, soybeans and rice established after a dry planting window. <stro...