Spring Precipitation, Delayed Planting, and Farmer Adaptation in Midwestern Soybean Production

Guang Tian, Shawn Conley, Seth Naeve and Paul Mitchell

No 361062, 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2025, Denver, CO from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Excessive precipitation in the spring season can lead to costly planting delays. This study quantifies yield losses from delayed soybean planting in the U.S. Midwest due to excessive spring precipitation and examines the extent to which farmers mitigate these losses through adaptive management. Using novel county-level planting progress data spanning 2000–2020, we construct a comprehensive panel dataset combining weather and yield data across 979 counties. To address endogeneity concerns, we employ an instrumental variable approach using exogenous precipitation shocks during the planting season. Our results indicate that each additional day of delayed Midwestern soybean planting reduces soybean yields, on average, by approximately 1.6% of the total, while farmers’ adaptive responses mitigate 36% of this loss. These findings underscore the importance of the impact of delayed planting on yields and farmers’ adaptive behaviors when assessing weather-related yield loss.

Keywords: Production; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/361062/files/7 ... A_WAEA_TIAN_etal.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea25:361062

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.361062

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2025, Denver, CO from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().