US Midwest / Corn Belt drought (2012)
2012–2013: a documented market event that overlapped the wholesale price windows of 4 tracked ingredients — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
What happened
A historic drought and heat across much of the US Midwest and Corn Belt in summer 2012 sharply reduced feed-grain and oilseed output; drought conditions peaked in late July 2012. USDA NASS reported the 2012 US corn crop at 10.8 billion bushels, about 13% below 2011, with the national corn yield falling to 123.4 bushels per acre (from 147.2 in 2011); soybean yield came in at 39.6 bushels per acre with production of 3.01 billion bushels, down about 3% from 2011. Soybeans are the dominant US vegetable-oil oilseed, and feed grain represents a large share of poultry production costs. Elevated feed costs persisted into the 2012/13 marketing year.
Documented account from our open, cited registry (sources below). Shown as context beside the price record — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
Affected ingredients
- Vegetable oil
- Whole chicken
- Chicken breast
- Chicken thigh
Why these ingredients were exposed
Each affected ingredient's public supply structure — where it comes from and how much it leans on imports. Context that makes the co-occurrence with a documented event legible, never its cause.
- Vegetable oilDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer. Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
- Whole chickenDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer. Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
- Chicken breast (boneless)Domestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer. Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
- Chicken thighDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer. Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
It explains why an ingredient sits in the path of a documented event — not that the event caused any price move. Co-occurrence in time, never a cause.
The detected moves that overlapped
Each figure is a wholesale reference against its own ±26-week normal — a market move, never a delivered price.
No sustained wholesale move in our detected set falls inside this event's window. The event is documented; our public price series simply didn't flag a notable departure from normal for these ingredients then — an honest absence, not a hidden one.
What moved together
Co-occurrence, not cause
Vegetable oil
In Vegetable oil's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Whole chicken
In Whole chicken's 3 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Chicken breast
In Chicken breast's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Chicken thigh
In Chicken thigh's 5 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Moving in the same weeks is not one thing causing another — many of these share a growing region, a shipping lane, or an aisle. It is a directed, bounded count: in K of an ingredient's own notable moves, another ran the same way.
Sources
2 sources
- Crop Production Down in 2012 Due to Drought, USDA Reports — USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)
- Drought and heat in 2012 lowered U.S. corn yields by more than 40 bushels per acre — USDA Economic Research Service
Documented events come from our open, cited registry (CC‑BY). Price moves are detected from public history (USDA/BLS/FRED) and shown as co-occurring context, never asserted as the cause. How events are picked.