Across the Corn Belt, it’s tale of two crops. “The eastern Corn Belt has very good rain and in some cases, too much. Then, there’s the western Corn Belt, which is too dry,” says Frayne Olson, crops marketing economist, NDSU Extension. “The grain market is having a hard time trying to differentiate, figuring out if the additional bushels in the east will compensate for the short-fall in the west.” Olson says much of the drought expectations in the Dakotas are already factored into the grain markets. The corn and soybean production areas of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa are being watched. “It looks like southern Minnesota and northern Iowa are having problems. The crop conditions are deteriorating. We’re trying to figure out what this means.”
