Farmers may not know it, but since 1875 they’ve been riding the Benner Cycle.
Samuel Benner had been a prosperous American farmer until he was wiped out by the commodity market panic and hog cholera epidemic of 1873.
In retirement, he created a set of long-term predictions that included grain, hogs, iron, the stock market and, likely unintentionally, the weather.
Climatologist Elwynn Taylor of Iowa State University said there isn’t a strong, well documented weather cycle that affects the North American Great Plains because of the physical distance to the mountains and the width of the western plains.
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Oddly, however, Benner’s market predictions parallel what happens in North American weather.
“We’ve seen booms and busts for a long time in North America,” Taylor said.
“We look at the pattern that farmer Benner drew out on his chart in 1875, all the way to the year 2000 and we see his predictions were pretty close to the mark and it continues to predict what will happen, including this past year’s prices …. Benner’s cycle seems to predict that every 19 years there would be a major drought and we are slightly overdue. Remember 1988?”
Taylor said Benner’s cycle may only be reinforcing what is already known about the current weather trend.
“When we first looked at the Benner Cycle, it was an economic cycle,” Taylor said.
“I saw a weather cycle. We compared it to tree rings and it’s a near perfect match for weather.”
Growth in trees parallels that of dry land crops because moisture provides biomass to plants and boosts grain yields.
This year, weather instability includes an early-spring end to the La Nina that has effected three out the past four years in Great Plains weather.
Long-term weather forecasts from the United States National Weather Service offer hope for reasonable agricultural weather during the 2009 growing season, with a warmer, drier spring than has occurred the past few years.
Taylor said the cooling effect of the La Nina Pacific Ocean current is still in place but may disappear or weaken by the end of April.
“That would result in warmer weather and all that goes with that this spring. We should see an early crop and potentially some very good yields based on good soil moisture and what we know about yield and warm springs,” he said.
“There may not be a drought this season, but from what I have seen, farmer Benner may have known more about the weather than he knew, and we are due for one pretty quick …. Droughts create high priced times. With all the high demand we have, the low inventories and the unstable markets, and if we get a drought, it will mean even higher prices in the near future.”
