OPINION (Charisma) – An unprecedented October blizzard that hit just before harvest time has absolutely devastated farms all across the U.S. heartland. As you will see below, one state lawmaker in North Dakota is saying that the crop losses will be “as devastating as we’ve ever seen.” This is the exact scenario that I have been warning about for months, and now it has materialized. Due to endless rain and horrific flooding early in the year, many farmers in the middle of the country faced very serious delays in getting their crops planted. So we really needed good weather at the end of the season so that the crops could mature and be harvested in time, and that did not happen. Instead, the historic blizzard that we just witnessed dumped up to 2 feet of snow from Colorado to Minnesota.
In fact, one city in North Dakota actually got 30 inches of snow. In the end, this is going to go down as one of the worst crop disasters that the Midwest has ever seen, and ultimately this crisis is going to affect all of us. According to the USDA, only 15% of all U.S. corn and only 14% of all U.S. soybeans had been harvested as of Oct. 6: Only 58% of U.S. corn was mature as of Oct. 6 and just 15% was harvested, according to the latest data from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
North Dakota’s crop was furthest behind, with just 22% of corn mature and none harvested as of Sunday, while South Dakota’s corn was 36% mature with 2% harvested. U.S. soybeans were only 14% harvested as of Sunday, 20 percentage points behind the average pace, USDA data showed. North Dakota and Minnesota beans were just 8% gathered while Iowa’s and South Dakota’s crop was only 5% harvested. READ MORE
