Brad Rippey

There are climate webinars held in different parts of the U.S. and at a webinar “North Central U.S. Climate” held on October 20, 2022, one of the presentations was titled Midwest/Great Plains Agricultural Update, October 20, 2022. The presentation was made by Brad Rippey – USDA. Analyst & Drought Monitor Author. Brad is the managing editor of the USDA Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin and is one of the Editors of the Drought Monitor so he is in a unique position to understand the crop situation in the U.S. If I was a little more patient, I might have a recording of his presentation to share with you but I thought that just presenting his slides would be informative.I am not sure how long it takes for the recording of those webinars to get posted.

I am presenting the slides without comments. If you look carefully, I think you will be able to see that the trend in yield increases for key crops has topped out. Is this global warming or a long cycle? It is hard to say but it is very concerning. Some of the current issues were better explained in his comments and the Q&A afterward. But I think readers will get a good grasp of the situation from the slides. I have personal experience with river levels being too high as the Ohio River Company was a client and that was a frequent problem for them. River levels being too low is new to me. So it is not just a water shortage for farms and cities but also the water-based transportation system in the U.S.. For those who do not know it, our inland water transportation system is one of the key natural endowments of the U.S. 

I have often published articles on the USDA Executive Briefings and some of Brad’s slides come from that source but he has access to all sorts of good stuff so I wanted to take advantage of that. He was kind enough to send me a PDF of his presentation so that is what is being presented in this article.