Probably, if I go by two posts by my NC State colleague Mike Roberts.<\/p>\n
Mike first\u00a0pointed out<\/a> that drought in the Midwest is not something to worry about:<\/p>\n “There’s a lot more\u00a0drought<\/a>\u00a0news these days (they gave me a quote all the way at the end of the story). \u00a0By some measures, particularly the\u00a0US Drought Monitor<\/a>, things\u00a0look pretty bad<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the time-series plot at the NY Times doesn’t go back very far in time. \u00a0If it did, the current drought would look much less exceptional. \u00a0Also, the areas with severe drought are not very productive agricultural areas. \u00a0The midwestern bread basket\u00a0looks just fine right now<\/a>. \u00a0Although the productive Mississippi Valley looks dry, crops there are irrigated, which should mitigate the damages.<\/p>\n Perhaps more importantly, standard drought indicators don’t predict crop outcomes especially well. \u00a0I wish they’d emphasize extreme heat more than drought.”<\/p>\n But then, a few days later, he noted<\/a> the following:<\/p>\n “Here’s the picture.\u00a0Compare that to where crops are grown.Consider that this is probably a particularly sensitive time in the growing season.\u00a0This makes me more bullish on commodity prices than the current drought map does.”<\/p>\n My own experience with this stems from the preliminary empirical work I did for my most recent paper<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Probably, if I go by two posts by my NC State colleague Mike Roberts. Mike first\u00a0pointed out that drought in the Midwest is not something<\/p>\n
![look pretty bad<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut the time-series plot at the NY Times doesn’t go back very far in time. \u00a0If it did, the current drought would look much less exceptional. \u00a0Also, the areas with severe drought are not very productive agricultural areas. \u00a0The midwestern bread basket\u00a0looks just fine right now<\/a>. \u00a0Although the productive Mississippi Valley looks dry, crops there are irrigated, which should mitigate the damages.<\/p>\nPerhaps more importantly, standard drought indicators don’t predict crop outcomes especially well. \u00a0I wish they’d emphasize extreme heat more than drought.”<\/p>\nBut then, a few days later, he noted<\/a> the following:<\/p>\n“Here’s the picture.\u00a0Compare that to where crops are grown.Consider that this is probably a particularly sensitive time in the growing season.\u00a0This makes me more bullish on commodity prices than the current drought map does.”<\/p>\nMy own experience with this stems from the preliminary empirical work I did for my most recent paper<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Probably, if I go by two posts by my NC State colleague Mike Roberts. Mike first\u00a0pointed out that drought in the Midwest is not something<\/p>\nContinue readingIs It Time to Buy Commodity Futures?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,50,55,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-climate-change","category-economics","category-food","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-K6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2858"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2876,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions\/2876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/packages\/images\/newsgraphics\/2011\/0711-drought\/0710-nat-webDROUGHT.png\"){kind=link}
![looks just fine right now<\/a>. \u00a0Although the productive Mississippi Valley looks dry, crops there are irrigated, which should mitigate the damages.<\/p>\nPerhaps more importantly, standard drought indicators don’t predict crop outcomes especially well. \u00a0I wish they’d emphasize extreme heat more than drought.”<\/p>\nBut then, a few days later, he noted<\/a> the following:<\/p>\n“Here’s the picture.\u00a0Compare that to where crops are grown.Consider that this is probably a particularly sensitive time in the growing season.\u00a0This makes me more bullish on commodity prices than the current drought map does.”<\/p>\nMy own experience with this stems from the preliminary empirical work I did for my most recent paper<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Probably, if I go by two posts by my NC State colleague Mike Roberts. Mike first\u00a0pointed out that drought in the Midwest is not something<\/p>\nContinue readingIs It Time to Buy Commodity Futures?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,50,55,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-climate-change","category-economics","category-food","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-K6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2858"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2876,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions\/2876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov\/products\/predictions\/tools\/edb\/lbfinal.gif\"){kind=link}