Crop Comments From Around The Country

Here's a sampling of what some folks are saying about soil, land rental prices, yields and other farm-related topics from around the country:

• 1/31/2019 Douglas County, IL: Tried to rent some local ground right before Christmas. put a bid of 265.00 @ acre! Guess what .. I'm not farming it!! Probably for the best! Excellent yields here in 2018 .. best soybeans I've ever raised!!
• 1/30/2019 Bolivar County, MS: concerning tight margins : a young guy gets a degree in agriculture - buys 6 trucks and starts hauling grain - at end of quarter his accountant tells him he's loosing his a--? He calls his ag professor and lays out all the details - ag professor has a meeting w/all the other professors - takes 3 weeks to hear back for answer- they told him to buy 6 more trucks ? Rent more land and buy more equipment?
• 1/30/2019 Wallace County, KS: Just like the 80’s, people are giving up or getting shut down. Young guys coming back to raise families at home are getting outbid on every quarter. Schools losing enrollment and the farms that already have 20000 or more acres are shutting these kids out. Then we wonder why schools are closing. Greed is the the new g word on the farm not god.
• 1/25/2019 Baltimore County, MD: Farmers don't operate like normal bussiness, Weadd more cows, plant more corn to lower our cost per unit. We always screw ourselves. And then many expect the goverment to bale us out. How much can you cut costs, plant less, lower production, price will go up. Problem is we are all too independent, and greedy.
• 1/24/2019 Laclede County, MO: Farmers should be like oil companies cut production in half and get twice the price fertilizer dealers would take notice in a hurry hope next year's better.
• 1/23/2019 Floyd County, IA: Thumbs up to Pembina guy. I am perplexed about the strong dollar as we are told it is supposed to buy so much. The dollar does buy a lot of ag commodities and precious metals but not land or INPUTS.
• 1/18/2019 Pembina County, ND: Bottom line--Inputs are killing all of us.
• 1/18/2019 Seneca County, OH: Dickey Co. ND, I could not agree more with what you said. I have been saying the same thing for years. Your year sounds exactly like how our year went too. 2nd worst fall (worst was 1972) I ever experienced and 2017 was 3rd worst. There are still unharvested crops in our area. I am also hearing that eastern Ohio has a lot of acres of soybeans still in the field. I also agree that no USDA reports has been a good thing. They only benefit 1 group of people and they certainly are not farmers.
• 1/18/2019 Haakon County, SD: 1/18/19. Still harvesting Flowers. 50ac to go. Light,wet. Decent yield by volume but test wt sux. May not b marketable. But they will make feed. 4”snow and cold.
• 1/17/2019 Coles County, IL: i drove around and was surprised to see some large fields of corn and soybeans unharvested and mostly flat in coles, douglas & edgar counties.