Editorial: Welcome to TheCropSite Newsletter

Weather… yep, we all know it's driving not just the US market, but global markets as well. So how about some good news?

Last week, Drew Lerner, meteorologist and president of World Weather, Inc., offered his global weather forecast during the Allendale Inc Ag Leader monthly webinar series. Lerner told farmers that if El Niño develops as expected, the end of July into August should bring some significant weather changes in a number of areas around the world.

For July and August, Lerner anticipates a wetter bias in parts of the world as El Niño kicks in:

• Mexico's drought continues to be a concern as it is likely to perpetuate itself with below average precipation.
• In July, south central Russia will be a little less dry, but August will turn wetter than normal.
• New dryness is evolving in southeastern Europe in the month of July, but August will bring wetter conditions.
• In July, Australia will continue to get good precipitation indicating near to above average precipitation levels, but will turn dry in August.
• China's dryness issues will get better in July in the heart of the north China plains, but in August, new areas will turn dry.

Soil moisture has been low in the north China plains for the last 4 or 5 weeks, but Lerner expects the dryness will slowly fade, with late July bringing rain.

The Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions have been critically dry for weeks, and it is going to stay that way until the El Niño phenomenon fully kicks in.

In the Ukraine, there isn't much topsoil or subsoil moisture, resulting in their corn crop suffering as well as sunseed, wheat and sugar beets. He expects some timely showers will begin in July, but the precipitation will likely come too late for many crops in the lower Volga River Basin where the worst of the drought has prevailed the last three years.

El Niño events tend to cause India to have poor summer monsoonal rains, Lerner said. This could have a negative impact on some of the monsoonal performance, meaning the oil seed and coarse grain areas could end up with a restricted amount of rain.

Lerner said it's been exceptionally wet in southern Brazil, delaying the second season corn harvest and even some of the wheat has been damaged because of the moisture.

"However, in northeastern Brazil the drought got an early start and is still very serious. Sugarcane, citrus and coffee crops are still being negatively impacted.

Lerner said Brazil should have more moisture to work with in the near-term, but could run dry later in the year if El Niño matures.

Lerner said El Niño should bring an increase in the rainfall in the western US and a continuation of below average precipitation in the eastern Midwest, especially in the lower eastern Midwest and the southeastern states. This might actually help the soybean crop, but it will obviously be too late for the corn crop.

To read the complete US weather forecast, click here. To read more about Lerner's global weather forecast, click here.

Have a great week!