Corn, the most widely produced feed grain, is grown in nearly every US state with production heavily concentrated in the midwest. This clustering can result in, and has led to, significant variability in the realized annual output of US producers - an outcome that can have a significant impact on the global economy. The advent of new seed strains and fertilization techniques have dampened production volatility somewhat, but accurate forecasts of exogenous variables such as precipitation, soil moisture, and heat accumulation continue to be no less important than they were in the 20th century. Growing Degree Days (GDD) - a commonly used metric that distills much of this information into a discrete observation - is useful but has certain limitations when used in isolation. Corn

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