Johnson is a farm kid from NW Kansas..  whose lineage have LIVED a few cycles.. in the 1980's.. 1983 specifically we lost our IRRIGATED corn crop to heat during the summer.. similar to this year?  Wet spring.. it actually snowed late that year.. like this year.. then turned hot and dry by June..  We have much better hybrids today but ???

We started raising dryland corn in about.. 1991.. 1992 and have every year since.. in 2009 I had a dryland corn field AVERAGE like 180.. by 2011 that same field averaged less than 5.. we only harvested the mudholes.. as the rest fryed.  Today I have a 115 bu aph on that field.. and some big mudholes.. drown out which I replanted day before yesterday..

This has been mimicked on the plains fringe.. the WHOLE NW quandrant of Kansas has gone to raising dryland corn.. where in the 1950's.. couldn't even raise wheat..???

Johnson's point is that the Northern Plains are similar.. that we see similar wet..cool.. hot.. and dry patterns set in for years even decades.. and that all this is NORMAL.. Ma Nature doing her thing.  Not Climate Change et all...

Technology can goose the yields for a period of time.. but some area's can do corn.. then "not so much" at other times..

That was his point.. we were talking about this back in 2012.. 

"But golly the Northern Plains flooded out in 2011.."

his response.. "they will get their turn at the Big Dry someday also.."

so we'll see..

A lot of this fringe acreage is under the gun so to speak.. can we adapt to multi decadal shifts in the weather patterns?  They may have to give up corn and beans and go back to heartier crops.. that was his point.

edit add: he stated that if the Northern plains gets going on the dryness.. it could reach all the way down to us.. similar to how they were affected by our turn in 2011..2012.