Triple-digit heat is threatening Midwest crops, but more soybeans than corn, according to USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey.
Triple-digit heat was back midweek throughout the corn belt as the Midwest’s worst heat wave in years was expected to peak. But for USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey, corn was not the immediate concern.
“Not a huge impact likely, for corn, in the scheme of things,” Rippey says. “A little bit more concerned for soybeans, as they continue to fill out the pods, that we could take a little bit off the top of the soybean yield potential there.”
And Rippey says, corn isn’t completely out of the woods either. “The main impact will be on the final fill of the crop. So, it may not fill out quite as nicely as we would like in some of those hotter, drier, western corn belt states, where we were hitting 100-degrees on multiple days this week.”
But overall, Rippey doesn’t see the short-term triple-digit heat as crop-destroying, leading him to predict just minor declines in next week’s progress report for corn and beans.
