Halfway through July, concerns persist that a continued state of drought in the American Midwest will impact on crop yields and lead to price rises in agricultural staples over the coming months. Following a steady decline in global food prices, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warned at the beginning of the month that adverse weather in numerous global regions, particularly the drought in the United States, where early estimates were forecasting record crops earlier this season, would cause panic and price rises for staple foods in its July Food Price Index.

The drought, which is currently affecting 26 US states, was declared a natural disaster last week by the US government in an effort to speed up relief operations.

The situation has so far caused the US Department of Agriculture to slash its forecast for maize production and condition. Last week the USDA announced the proportion of maize set to rate good-to-excellent had dropped to 40 per cent.

Although drought-stricken regions received some long-awaited rain over the weekend, the scattered rainfall did little to ease the drought. Maize yields are thought to have been irreversibly affected and soy crops, which have proven more resilient, are reportedly deteriorating in the worst affected regions.

Unfortunately forecasts look bleak; rain is expected to fall on around 75 per cent of the parched Midwest in coming weeks, but meteorologists have said that the small amount of rain, which will coincide with further increases in temperature, will prove too little to alleviate the effects of drought.

The drought, the most expansive ever recorded by the US government’s Drought Monitor programme, is said to be the worst since that which affected the country in 1988-89; the 1988 drought is thought to have caused up to $120 billion worth of damage.

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