Tag: Soybeans

Markets are up, way up!

Last Friday, the commodity markets made a giant leap in the upward direction, with corn up 20 cents and soybeans up 28 cents! Wow! With all the volatility going on in the markets today, this was an exceptional leap. Corn and soybeans were trending downward just a few days before.

Last Thursday ended the Pro Farmer scout tour, a 4-day look at corn and soybeans from Ohio to Nebraska and included the states of Indiana, Illinois, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. I followed the tweets of some of the western scouts as they traveled from Nebraska to Minnesota and things were not looking bright in terms of yield.

Due to drought, hail storms and strong winds, corn looked smaller all across the states. The average yield in Iowa was 164 bushels per acre, a far cry from the expected 200+ bushels per acre we were all hoping for. In our area of Iowa, corn looked good according to the scouts, but they could tell there was some stress due to high temperature nights during pollination that cut the potential yield.

After reading about the tour’s results and findings, I wonder if our 172.4 bushels per acre average we determined from our fields is correct? Not good.

The scouts calculated that this year’s corn crop will be around 12.484 billion bushels per acre with an average yield of 147.9 bushels per acre. That is a lower number than expected, putting demand over supply, therefore bringing the price of corn up pretty sharply on Friday morning to $7.55! We will see what happens on Monday! (I wanted to get in on a price above $7.50, so I sold a little on the futures market…exciting)!

Soybeans ran up sharply as well, even though the tour stated it was a beautiful crop. It was more difficult to determine a yield average for soybeans because with a little rain, soybeans could fill more pods and gain more pods in these next few weeks. But nevertheless, soybeans jumped to $14.14, up $0.28 from the day before! The basis was wide, unfortunately, but a price above $13.50 cash sales was what I was looking for. Again, it will be interesting to see what happens on Monday.

Our fields are looking good!

My dad and I were walking our fields yesterday thinking how much we needed some rain. We noticed the hardness of the soil and the lesions it caused from a lack of moisture. As we looked at our soybean fields, we noticed that with some more rain, more pods would develop and fill out.

We must have said the word ‘rain’ a special number of times to make the Gods listen because last night, it rained! We received an inch of glorious rain and I must be turning into a farmer because I was laying in bed listening to the thunderstorm smiling from ear to ear. I’ve never been that excited about rain before.

On our crop scouting tour of our fields we noticed how beautiful the soybeans were. The plants are tall but they could still use some additional pods per stalk. We noticed about 3-4 pods per node was average and about 45 pods per stalk was average. We would like to see that number doubled.

Insects and fungal issues were little to none and right now our soybean fields look gorgeous. We really hope that they get very little stress in the next month and more moisture to gain more pods.

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The issues with corn that I’ve been reading about are Goss’ Wilt, a bacterial disease, and corn aphids. Yes, corn aphids. Yet another pest to scout for and determine whether they affect yield or not. We didn’t see any Goss’ Wilt, but we did notice Grey Leaf Spot in many of our fields, some more than others.

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Also, we discovered some firing of the stalks and bottom leaves as we walked deeper into some of our fields. In some fields the outside rows were very green from root to tassel but as we walked inward, the firing was more prevalent, even in some moisture filled soils. We could have a nitrogen deficiency issue or a compaction issue in those areas.

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We followed the yield test calculations that the ProFarmer scout team tour is using and came up with 172.5 bushels/acre. We really hope we will see better yields than this this year. Our corn ears looked healthy but they definitely were reduced in size by the heat wave that took place during pollination in July. The kernels are already starting to dent and the kernel size is not as large as we would like to see.

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All in all, we were satisfied with what we saw. There is always room for improvement but in general our plants look healthy and on track for some good yields in our part of Iowa!