crop yields

Wheat production in Russia is up 20 percent this year, allowing the world's No. 3 grower to move into to exporter spot. The monthly World Agricultural Production report says Russia reaped a record 72 million tonnes of wheat this year, thanks to a record average yield per hectare.

For the third month in a row, the USDA said the record-setting U.S. corn and soybean crops are bigger than expected. At 15.2 billion bushels, the corn crop is roughly a billion bushels larger than the 2014 record and the soybean crop, now pegged at 4.36 billion bushels, is 10-percent larger than the previous mark, also set in 2014.

In the 20 years since GMO crops were approved for cultivation, U.S. farmers have embraced them almost to exclusion of other seeds while Europe has steadily refused to let them into its fields. The New York Times says its "extensive examination" of U.S. and European farming found that genetic engineering "has not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides."

A corn disease that originated in South Africa, bacterial leaf stripe, has been found in the heart of the Corn Belt with little known about how it spreads or its affect on yields, says DTN. The disease has been identified in field corn, seed corn, popcorn and sweet corn in nine states from South Dakota to Texas.

Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University, says the school's newly dedicated Indiana Corn and Soybean Innovation Center "will play a big part" in helping to assure enough food for the rising world population. The center is the first field phenotyping facility in North America.

The record-setting corn and soybean crops forecast by USDA — the latest in a string of bumper crops — will drive down commodity prices and put pressure on growers to cut their costs, says economist Gary Schnitkey of U-Illinois. Midwestern growers will lose money at current rental rates, says Schnitkey, and will not break even until rates drop by $50 an acre, or roughly one-fifth.

Funding worldwide for agriculture-technology startups in the first six months of 2016 dropped 20 percent, to $1.8 billion, from the same period last year, even as the number of overall deals rose, Reuters reports.

U.S. pistachio production is expected to fall by half in the 2015/2016 crop year, causing the global crop to contract by 86,000 tonnes to 529,000 tonnes, the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service reported. The U.S. pistachio crop is in an off-year cycle of its alternate-bearing harvest, where trees produce a greater than average crop one year, and a lower than average crop the next.

FNSEA, the French national farming union, estimates the wheat crop in Europe’s largest agricultural producer will total 30 million tonnes this year, down 26 percent from 2016 due to a rainy and cloudy weather that kept grains from filling.

U.S. farmers are headed for a record-large corn crop at the same time that market prices may be the lowest in a decade — a combination that could trigger crop-insurance indemnities for farmers who bought high levels of revenue insurance, says DTN. "In fact, many corn growers could trigger 2016 crop insurance pay-outs with no yield loss."

Record-high yields for the winter wheat crop, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. wheat production, will more than offset the smallest wheat plantings in years, says the USDA. With the larger-than-expected harvest, the U.S. wheat stockpile will top 1.1 billion bushels— twice as large as it was three years ago.

U.S. growers will harvest a record 7.78 million tonnes (245 million hundredweight) of rice, says the USDA, a hefty 6-percent increase from the projection made a month ago, thanks to larger plantings and higher yields. The larger crop is likely to depress the season-average price 5 percent from the $12.30 per hundredweight (100 pounds) for this marketing year, which ends July 31.

U.S. corn plantings grew 10 percent in the past decade, driven by the commodity boom that began in 2006. Economist Gary Schnitkey says the expansion occurred mostly in the western Corn Belt, with North Dakota and South Dakota accounting for one-third of the increased U.S. acreage of 7.9 million acres.

Brazil will harvest a smaller-than-expected 70 million tonnes of corn this marketing year, said USDA, lowering its forecast by 7.5 million tonnes in one month because of adverse weather. Brazil is the third-largest corn grower in the world, trailing the United States and China, and is a U.S. competitor for export sales.

High corn and soybean yields will bring bumper crops, traders said in anticipation of the USDA Crop Production and WASDE reports to be issued today. In surveys by Bloomberg and Reuters, analysts said the fall harvest will be bigger than thought a month ago, which will fatten U.S. inventories and hold down commodity prices for months to come.

The 15 nations of the Caribbean, an array of islands and coastal nations, experiences drought-like weather every year and can expect droughts to be increasingly frequent and intense due to climate change, says an FAO report. "Agriculture is the most likely sector to be impacted, with serious economic and social consequences," said the UN agency.