Precipitation Impact on Crop Yield

Climate change is a massive force impacting and changing many weather trends, including precipitation rates. This thesis will study the relationship between crop yield and changes in precipitation. Understanding crop yield is important in determining overall crop supply every year as well as crop prices. Many factors can have either a negative or a positive impact on crop yields. One of these many factors is precipitation. This thesis looks directly at the impacts of changes in precipitation on corn yield in Iowa from 1991-2020. To do this, a regression analysis was performed to compare changes in yearly precipitation rates for the water year (October through September) from 1991 to 2020 and the average corn yield at the end of each crop season. This study did find a relationship between the corn yield and changes in precipitation rates