Relentless Heat Poses New Threat to Soybeans, Corn

Persistent, blistering heat across much of the country east of the Rockies continued to make daily life miserable for millions Wednesday while posing a new threat to important Midwestern crops already withered by one of the worst droughts of the century.

Humid 90-to-100-degree temperatures turned subways in Chicago and New York into underground ovens, sent gasping asthma patients to New Jersey hospital emergency rooms and forced people to seek air conditioning from St. Louis to Boston.

The relentless heat even turned the country’s largest body of fresh water--Lake Michigan--lukewarm. The National Weather Service reported Wednesday that water in the 307 mile-long, 118 mile-wide lake reached 77 degrees at Milwaukee and 75 degrees at Michigan City, Ind., the warmest lake temperature in more than 30 years.

Beans in Critical Phase

But as it has all summer, the extraordinary weather was having its biggest impact on the Midwest’s agricultural economy, threatening the nation’s $9.3-billion soybean crop, which this week began the critical bean-forming phase of its life cycle.

Soybeans, used for a range of food products from margarine and salad dressings to tofu and animal feed, are the one crop that farmers hoped would survive the record hot and dry summer. The drought has already claimed much of the nation’s spring wheat crop and may have cut the corn harvest by up to 50%. This week’s heat wave, combined with the parching drought, is dashing hopes that the soybean crop will escape heavy damage.

At the same time, the new blast of hot temperatures is causing additional damage to drought-weakened fields of corn.

“It’s pretty bleak,” said Larry A. Werries, director of agriculture in Illinois, the nation’s leading soybean producing state and the second-biggest producer of corn.

Reduces Crop Estimate

“Up to last Monday agronomists were saying we would get three quarters of a normal soybean crop,” Werries said Wednesday. “Now I’m predicting only half our normal crop, and we already have no better than half a crop of corn in the field.”

Soybeans are the one major agricultural commodity that is in relatively limited supply in the United States. That raises the possibility not of shortages, but rather of imports, which could affect the country’s balance of trade.

“We are losing potential (soybean) yield every day,” said John L. Creswell, an Iowa agronomist and crop production specialist. “In this intense heat we’re seeing our crops deteriorate rather fast.”

The heat is one problem; drought is another. The plants, signaled that summer is ending by days that slowly grow shorter, have come out of a drought-tolerating dormancy and have begun to try to reproduce by forming beans. This requires moisture to move nutrients from the soil to the 30 to 40 bean pods that have formed on each plant.

‘Unable to Move Nutrients’

“Right now we have no moisture,” said Creswell. “They’ve run out of water and are unable to move nutrients to the developing beans. If this weather continues, we’ll see pods abort and the plant cease to flower.”

A survey of major bean-producing states in the Midwest shows serious deterioration of the crops. On Monday, before the current heat wave began to make its mark, 25% of the Illinois bean crop was in poor condition. In Iowa, the nation’s second biggest soybean producer, 22% was in poor condition, while in Minnesota, the third ranking producer, 54% of the crop was in poor condition.

“Rains anytime this month will help, but we’ve already lost some of our yield potential,” said Barb Anderson, editor of Soybean Update, a trade association publication.

The hot weather is also causing corn plants virtually to self-destruct by moving all the moisture from their stalks and leaves into the young kernels forming on stunted cobs. As a result even gentle winds will blow the plants down. This condition, known as lodging, is already reported in wide areas of Iowa, and Werries expects the problem to turn up in Illinois in the coming weeks.

Crop Losses Elsewhere

The problems are not limited to the United States. Wednesday the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, a privately funded research organization, reported that drought in the United States, Canada and China will result in the steepest one-year drop in world grain stocks ever recorded.