ARLINGTON - The U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecasting a nationwide average corn yield of 155 bushels per acre. Fall River farmer Roger Neuhoff finds that prognostication mildly amusing.

Between the too-wet weather from spring snow melt and early-summer deluges, followed by a long dry spell in July and August, Neuhoff said he is almost sure that his fields won't yield that much.

"I've got more trouble now with drought than with flooding," he said over lunch Wednesday after the Columbia County Corn Growers Association meeting at the University of Wisconsin's Arlington Agricultural Research Station. "Some of my fields are on rolling hills, and the corn and beans are hurting."

Farmer Dan Hamling of Fall River, whose fields are near Doylestown, said news of scattered rainfall Wednesday morning might have been good news for some Columbia County farmers, but "I just don't know if it's too late for my corn or not."

Even Mark Morningstar, who spoke to about 40 farmers gathered for the Corn Growers meeting, is skeptical about the projected average yield.

"I think it's a little high," said Morningstar, of Cottage Grove-based Blimling and Associates, who spoke about grain markets. "I think, myself, that this is the highest number we'll see this year, not an average.

"When guys who have been in their fields tell me they don't think this prediction is true, I don't think it's true either," he added.

Nationwide, Morningstar said, an estimated 87 acres were planted in corn this season, with 79.3 acres predicted to be harvested - a number that he thinks might be high, in light of the flood damage that many Midwestern farm fields, including in Columbia County, sustained early this summer.

The USDA also is forecasting a nationwide corn harvest of 12.28 billion bushels. That estimate, too, could be high, Morningstar said.

But what used to be considered "the fundamentals" of the farm economy - including issues such as the effect of weather on local yields - are no longer the only factor in determining how much a farmer might earn from the sale of his or her corn crop.

Issues such as trade in commodities funds, speculation in commodity futures and increased worldwide demand for corn - to feed the growing demand for meat in nations such as China and India, and to supply the raw material for ethanol - all factor in to the price that a farmer might receive for corn.

"Everything is so mashed together," he said. "It used to be enough to watch the weather and watch exports. Now, it's not that easy."

Mark Schroeder of DeForest, president of the Columbia County Corn Growers Association, said this represents, for many farmers, a fundamental change in how they sell what they produce.

"Make that point to everybody: Marketing has changed," he said.

When Schroeder asked Morningstar for a prediction on where corn prices are going in coming months, Schroeder was happy to oblige, with the caveat that this represents his personal prognostication.

"I see us as higher, not lower. I'm bullish, not bearish," he said.

Specifically, he said, that would translate into a price of $4.50 to $7 per bushel for corn.

Hamling noted, however, that he knows several farmers who, in fulfillment of agreements made in previous seasons, are selling this year's crop for much less than that.

"So many people have ‘should have, would have, could have' thoughts about their crops," he said.

Fertilizer costs

Factor in, too, the costs of production, including the skyrocketing cost of chemical fertilizers.

Scott Smith, plant food coordinator at the Evansville-based Landmark Services Cooperative, said there's been a 130 percent increase in the price of fertilizers between 2000 and 2008.

Some of the causes, he said, include the high price of natural gas (a key ingredient of anhydrous ammonia) in the United States, but not in other nations; and a worldwide demand for phosphates that exceeds the U.S. industry's ability to produce it.

"It's world demand for this plant food that is the real driving force behind the prices we see today," Smith said. "Other countries want to grow their own food, and they're fueling the demand for fertilizer. And, if we depend on imports, and other countries bid higher for them than we do, that's where the supply is going to go."

Jim Shelton, agronomy manager at Landmark, said some farmers respond to the shortages and higher prices of fertilizer by cutting back on their applications - a big mistake, he said, because crops that are not adequately fertilized lose their resistance to floods and droughts, and yields go down dramatically.

What farmers should do instead, Shelton said, is use technology to ensure that all plant nutrients are being applied where they are needed, and not being applied where they're not needed.

For example, farm implements now come equipped (or can be retrofitted) with global positioning systems capable of reading a computerized field map, then applying chemicals at varying rates, depending on where they are needed the most.

"It's too expensive to waste fertilizer by putting it on at the wrong rates, and in the wrong places," Shelton said.

Super-seeds?

Even the seed corn that farmers use can affect their yields and their profits, said Dennis Chamberlain, Wisconsin and northern Illinois area sales manager for Monsanto. He said seeds are being developed that are genetically resistant to things such as insects that can cut into a crop yield.

Yes, those seeds have a higher initial cost, he said. But they wouldn't be on the market, he said, if farmers didn't tell him that they increased profits through better yields.

Monsanto is working to develop corn varieties capable of yielding up to 300 bushels per acre by the year 2030, Chamberlain said.

That's not just for the purpose of feeding people in the United States, he said, but for feeding a world that, by 2030, will have about 9.5 billion people - many of them living in developing countries where economic growth will increase the demand for red meat, which requires corn for cattle feed.

"We are in a new world," Chamberlain said, "in terms of how agriculture is going to look."

 

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