Milling & Baking News - August 5, 2014 - 34

Weather Outlook 

July Europe weather raises
wheat quality issues
BY DREW LERNER

July turned out to be one of the wettest
months of the year in Europe with rainfall well above average in many areas
where winter wheat and other small
grains were maturing and being harvested. Delays in fieldwork resulted,
and some quality declines were noted
from France to Czech Republic. In the
meantime, highly favorable U.S. weather still has potential for a couple of issues, including a possible warm and dry
finish to the soybean crop in late August
and early September and worry over
early season frost and freeze potentials
after a very cool month of July.
No major weather-related world
crop issues are prevailing today. However, a number of smaller issues are
Per cent of normal
rainfall for
July 2014

plaguing market weather mentality.
Among those issues, the one that has
been most significant has been rainfall
across the European Continent.
July was notably wetter than usual
in most of Europe, but especially in
France, Germany and from the Balkan
countries north northeast into a part
of Czech Republic and Slovakia. Many
of these small grain production areas
reported two to four times the normal
amount of rain. France and western
Germany were among the areas with
the largest moisture surpluses.
Winter wheat, barley and some
oats were being harvested during the
month, but frequent rainfall caused
some notable disruptions to fieldwork. The environment remained a
little tenuous at the end of the month,
although conditions had improved for
a little while in late July. Frequent rainfall and mild temperatures can keep
mature grain wet in the head of these
34 / August 5, 2014 Milling & Baking News

plants and in worst case scenarios that
leads to head sprouting, which reduces the crop from bread making material to a poor feed grain.
As July drew to a close, the forecast
was for continued wet weather into
the early days of August, but changes
will occur in August that should help
get the remaining crop harvest back
on track. A decline in grain quality is
sure to be ongoing, however.
Russia, Ukraine and China
Not too far away, in western portions of the Commonwealth of Independent States a weather pattern
change occurred in late July that ended
wet weather for western Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic States and northwestern
Russia, and induced
a period of dry and
warm weather. The
change came at a
perfect time when
winter wheat and rye
were finishing their
filling process and
beginning to mature.
The dry weather bias
that evolved in the
final days of July was
expected to prevail
into the first 10 days
of August, and that
was expected to help
get harvesting under
way.
The Russia and
Ukraine crops were expected to be
relatively large, despite some dryness
issues in the lower Volga River Basin
for a while during the summer season.
Late season spring grain in Russia's
eastern New Lands was rated in very
good condition after some well-timed
late July rainfall evolved. Some of the
late month rain came with very cool
weather, but no crop damage evolved.
China's winter grain harvest ended
in July with great success. The crop
was suspected of being large. Spring
cereals now are moving through the
filling stage of development with
some crops maturing. The outlook for
that crop is also high along with corn
production.
India's monsoon performs poorly
The largest world weather problem
at the end of July was still centered on
India. The monsoon season was six
weeks late getting started this year, and

as the month of July drew to a close the
nation was still 25% behind in its usual
rainfall. Northwestern India was suffering the greatest rainfall deficits with
rainfall totaling 38% less than usual. In
contrast, the oilseed production areas
in the central part of India were only
20% off its normal rainfall, and much
of the region was in the midst of planting and early development.
India's weather environment has
not been and will probably not be very
supportive of above average rainfall in
any part of the nation - at least not in
the first 10 days of August.
Southeast Asia palm oil
India's poor rainfall distribution
was largely attributed to the developing El Niño phenomenon in the
equatorial region of the eastern Pacific Ocean. El Niño events are nearly
always closely correlated with below
average rainfall in the Indian subcontinent, as is poor rainfall in other
southeast Asian nations.
Palm oil, coffee, cocoa, sugarcane
cane rice and many other crops in western Indonesia and western Malaysia
have experienced a poor distribution
of rainfall recently, and it was at least
partially due to El Niño. Some of the
dryness actually associated with some
cooler-than-usual ocean temperatures
surrounding Indonesia and Malaysia as
well as a general region of suppressed
thunderstorm activity affecting areas
from the Maritime Continent back to the
west across the Indian Ocean to eastern
portions of the African Continent. These
anomalous weather and ocean features
will fester in August and combine with
the developing El Niño event to further
reduce rainfall across the region.
North America cool threat
One of the larger areas in the world
that has had almost ideal weather in
recent weeks is North America. Welltimed rainfall and alternating periods
of wet and dry weather have induced
extremely good looking crops from the
south-central parts of Saskatchewan
and a part of southern and central Alberta into the heart of the U.S. Midwest
corn and soybean production region.
Many producers and analysts have
reported the potential for very high
yielding crops, but the game is not over
yet, and there are two additional issues
that need to be monitored before the
crop can be guaranteed large.
One of the recent concerns in North
America this summer has been over
temperatures and degree day accumulations. The month of July was much
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