Weather’s impact on crops
Reporting on the agricultural impacts of weather can be a tricky thing.
Think of what your reaction would have been if you were a markets reporter in, say, Brazil, reading reports and seeing pictures of the great Manitoba flood of 1997. You’d assume that a significant portion of Canada’s grain land wouldn’t be seeded that year.
Yet almost all of it was seeded and overall Canadian production was little affected.
Last year, Canadians saw pictures of devastating floods in China but analysts here thought the flooding wouldn’t affect that much productive land.
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China purchased just over 20 million tonnes of wheat, corn, barley and sorghum last year, that is well below the 60 million tonnes purchased in 2021-22.
No one predicted that the Chinese rapeseed crop would be damaged and that China would buy about 1.5 million tonnes of Canadian canola.
So here we are in the winter of 1999 again trying to figure out what the weather is doing to China’s crops.
Last week there was a report that an estimated 55 million acres of cropland across China has been hit by drought.
In Shandong province just south of Beijing, it is reputed to be the worst drought this century with only about 30 millimetres of rain since last September.
The International Grains Council said this dryness caused it to lower its estimate of Chinese wheat production to 105 million tonnes, down from 110 million last year.
Not all areas affected
But China is a big country. While it is dry in the north, where grain is still in the dormant stage, southern grain and rapeseed areas seem to have adequate moisture.
And analysts note there is plenty of time in northern areas for rain before crop growth.
The dryness in northern China is already a factor that wheat traders at the Chicago Board of Trade are watching.
But it is still too early to say whether these concerns will disappear or will dominate the world’s grain market in 1999-2000.
As for the rest of the world, major crop production areas are generally in good shape. Each time oilseed prices drop we are reminded of the good crop about to be harvested in Brazil and Argentina.
Concerns were developing late last week about moisture in the southern plains of the United States. Weekend rain helped parts of Kansas, but areas farther south were still dry as of Monday.
South Africa is fairly dry and Spain and Portugal are also dry, which might have an impact on the pulse industry.
