Drought conditions in the Dakotas and Northern Montana are worsening fast, threatening wheat crops.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Bloomberg: “The wheat varieties that trade on U.S. commodity exchanges are diverging sharply in price. Spring wheat is fetching a growing premium to the winter classes grown in the Great Plains and Midwest, with the spread against hard red winter wheat futures reaching a nine-year high. That’s because the spring crop, which still has several weeks left to develop, is in poor shape as drought conditions persist in northern states.”
From Eric Holthaus (sciencebyericholthau newsletter) today:
“There’s a quickly worsening drought right now in the upper Midwest. In just the last week, “extreme” drought expanded from 7.7 percent to 25.1 percent of North Dakota, the hardest-hit state. And next week, a multi-day heat wave is on the way. It’s expected to reach as high as 107 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the Dakotas,
more than 20 degrees above normal.Why does that matter? For one, it might seriously affect this year’s wheat harvest there.
Wheat is humanity’s most important grain food source, the United States is the world’s largest wheat exporter, and the Dakotas and Montana are now the most important wheat growing region of the United States. Wheat prices have already gone up more than 10 percent in just the past few weeks in response to the drought. This year’s American wheat crop is currently rated the
worst in 29 years..."