The Climate Corporation published an article last week describing the impacts of an El Niño on yields of corn and soybeans in the Midwest. Their analysis showed that El Niño has little impact on yields in that region. But how about the Southeast? While we have much smaller acreage planted in those crops, the yields in the Midwest (and elsewhere) do affect the markets for those crops here. You can look at regional yield maps by El Niño phase at https://agroclimate.org/tools/Regional-Yield-Maps/.
One thing to keep in mind is that the current El Niño is rapidly fading away. I expect to see neutral conditions return in the next month or two. After that? While the models don’t all agree, statistics argue that we should swing into a La Niña later this summer, which could affect the yields. The AgroClimate residual maps at https://agroclimate.org/tools/Regional-Yield-Maps/ show that in neutral years corn yields tend to be near average, while in La Niña years they tend to be better than average. For soybeans, neutral years tend to be below average in yield while in La Niña years the yield is more variable but generally better than average. Note that these statistics are for a combination of dryland and irrigated crops, as far as I can tell. You can try out the maps for a variety of other Southern crops as well.
