Probably, if I go by two posts by my NC State colleague Mike Roberts.
Mike first pointed out that drought in the Midwest is not something to worry about:
“There’s a lot more drought news these days (they gave me a quote all the way at the end of the story). By some measures, particularly the US Drought Monitor, things look pretty bad.
But the time-series plot at the NY Times doesn’t go back very far in time. If it did, the current drought would look much less exceptional. Also, the areas with severe drought are not very productive agricultural areas. The midwestern bread basket looks just fine right now. Although the productive Mississippi Valley looks dry, crops there are irrigated, which should mitigate the damages.
Perhaps more importantly, standard drought indicators don’t predict crop outcomes especially well. I wish they’d emphasize extreme heat more than drought.”
But then, a few days later, he noted the following:
“Here’s the picture. Compare that to where crops are grown.Consider that this is probably a particularly sensitive time in the growing season. This makes me more bullish on commodity prices than the current drought map does.”
My own experience with this stems from the preliminary empirical work I did for my most recent paper on the impacts of rising food prices and food price volatility. Looking at the impact of each type of natural disaster, it looked as though episodes of extreme temperature had a considerable impact on food prices compared to droughts.