What if a flash drought hits the US Corn Belt?
A July flash drought in Iowa/Illinois sends CBOT corn limit-up and drags the broader grain complex — clean long corn/soy, with fertilizer and food-CPI second-order; the semis-water tangent is noise at this size. Rhymes with the 2012 US Corn Belt drought that drove corn to a record ~$8.40. Transmission: lifts feed costs for China/Mexico importers and pressures EM food-importers' FX. Forward: tighter US carryout than 2012's buffer means yields matter more per bushel lost — the convexity to weather headlines is higher.
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The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. A July flash drought across Iowa and Illinois slashes US corn yields, sending CBOT corn limit-up for days. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Corn ▲ · Climate/crop supply ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.