Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | First, a question, how likely is a hard freeze for northern Iowa? The reason I ask is that if soybeans still have their canopy closed they will be quite resistant to all but a hard freeze. The air temperature in the canopy will stay warmer than the exposed tops. It isn't uncommon to see the top most stems & leaves die and turn black long before a frost kill the whole plant. Here in Upstate New York we usually don't get a "killing" frost until the third week in Oct. despite several quite stiff freezes. In fact sometimes we can't harvest the later planted beans until we a killing frost in order to defoliate them. A killing frost has to be 28 F & below for several hours, not just an hour or so just before dawn.
Second, How many acres are really at risk, assuming Iowa is safe then this leaves Minn, ND & SD which have 7.5, 6,& 5 million acres respectively. A check of crop progress shows that 97,96 & 95 pct are setting pods. Only Minn. shows any coloring at 15%. This suggests that yes large areas of these three states and possibly Mich. are vulnerable but how vulnerable is very unclear.
Finally, estimated yield for Minn, ND & SD are 42, 32 & 40 respectively. Even if there was a total failure this would amount to some 700 million bushel which could trim the national production from 3.8 to 3.1. This is certainly a significant reduction but the chance of a 700 M bushel loss is not so very likely. More likely you might expect half that or 350 million so the crop becomes 3.5 instead of 3.8. This is still a really big crop but could put beans back above $11.50-12.00
Edited by 1234 9/7/2014 22:33
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Completely off the hip figuring/hypothetic
