Yield loss eyed as snow covers U.S. corn crop

Reuters: As much as 100 million bushels of U.S. corn could be lost after heavy snowstorms in recent days likely delayed until spring the final stages of an already historically slow harvest, analysts and meteorologists said on Monday. The harvest delays helped to push up corn futures more than 1 percent to a six-month high on Monday at the Chicago Board of Trade.

"There are 620 million bushels left in the field and we could lose 10 percent of that," said Joe Victor, analyst for Illinois-based research and consulting firm Allendale Inc. The U.S. Agriculture Department last week in its final harvest update of the year said 5 percent of the corn crop was still in the fields.

And after much of the U.S. Midwest and Plains regions were pounded by heavy winter storms in past several days, it's likely to stay there until next year. As much as 25 inches of snow fell in parts of the Dakotas -- two states where the corn harvest was furthest behind….

Snow covered corn, shot by Biol, Wikimedia Commons