The latest U.S. Drought Monitor indicated year-over-year decreases in the amount of drought coverage area for major crops and commodities.

Participants: Rod Bain and USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey.

Transcript

When it comes to areas of agricultural commodities covered by drought per the April 2nd US drought monitor, if you look at all major crops and commodities we see pretty much across the board decreases from this time a year ago with USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey noting few exceptions such as soybeans, barley and sugar beets.

Seeing year over year increases in drought coverage.

Looking at winter, we are one very active crop at this time of year with at least 18 percent of the US winter wheat production area currently experiencing drought.

That's actually up a little bit from a few weeks ago.

We dropped off to 12 percent during the month of March, but regardless of how you look at it, that is down significantly from 49 percent of the winter wheat area in drought during the planting season last October reflected in improved winter wheat crop condition ratings over the past five weeks.

I'm Rod Bain reporting for the US Agriculture in Washington, D.C.