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| Well, I'm simply making the point that A: the "corn belt" has expanded, let's say since the ethanol plant building boom mid-2000s, to a radius of many, many more miles than it was in 1994. And that just means that B: I'm kinda using 1994 as a benchmark, as the odds of such a high percentage of corn acreage having such a favorable scenario as that particular growing season are greatly reduced now.
Mizzou Tiger lacked some nuance, no doubt. But just broadly speaking, if you want to apply the same weather pattern to a thousand miles? Above-average temps, probably great up north (look at how Minnesota performed 2012 and 2010) but the high plains and the belt south of I-70 get beat to hell. Above-average precip, probably great for Kansas and Nebraska dryland but it sucks for Ohio, Wisconsin, southern Illinois, that are prone to get excessively wet on unforgiving soils anyway. Below-average temps? Missouri has a real chance at a banger, but it's gonna be a miserable harvest of low quality corn for Michigan and North Dakota. Below-average precip? Well, we've just had some recent examples of that- prairie pothole country performs like it's all pattern tiled, but there's some people in cattle country taking corn acres and putting them back into forage crops because feed has been scarce and super expensive for too long.
It ain't peak corn, we are still going to have crops beat trendline and set new records. Outliers of the same magnitude to the upside just will be moderated by the geography and the climate. |