Oct. 22—REGIONAL — With 95% of the soybeans harvested and 66% of corn harvested across Minnesota as of Sunday, area farmers are wrapping up one of the most challenging crop years they’ve seen in recent history.
Mitch Montag, grain department manager for New Vision Cooperative, said the weather had a tremendous impact on the yields farmers received. A lot of crop producers dealt with planting delays due to a wet spring, followed by historic flooding in some parts of the region in late June and early July, and the drought conditions by late summer and early fall.
“The crop had a tough start and didn’t necessarily have the best finish to it,” Montag said. “I think yields are down 15% to 20%, conservatively speaking, but it’s also been very sporadic.”
Across the New Vision footprint in southern Minnesota, Montag said soybean yields ranged from 35 to 60 bushels per acre.
“A lot of variability — it just depended on when you planted, what kind of precipitation you got on them,” he said, adding that beans planted earlier fared better than those that were planted late and hit dry weather at the worst time for crop development.
“The farther west you go, closer to Sioux Falls (South Dakota), that’s where they avoided some of the heavy moisture this spring. They didn’t fight some of the drown-outs as bad,” Montag shared. “That’s probably where you’ll see some of the better yields.
“The closer you get to Worthington, Brewster, that’s where you’re in that 35 to 45 (bushels per acre yield).”
The big planting window for corn also resulted in a wide range of yields come harvest, with farmers seeing anywhere from 140 to 180 bushels per acre. Closer to Worthington and Brewster, Montag said yields were typically in a range of 150 to 155 bushels per acre.
Just to the north, at Chandler Feed & Grain, CEO Derek Krosschell said soybean yields have ranged from 40 to 60 bushels per acre, with corn ranging from 170 to 220 bushels per acre.
“Soybeans were disappointing, but corn is better than they expected,” Krosschell said based on what he’s heard from farmers.
While the Chandler area had 14 inches of rain the last week of June, they didn’t see the large areas of drown-outs that producers closer to the Minnesota 60 corridor experienced.
Krosschell said the quality of corn coming into the elevator is very good, while beans were too dry.
Montag, meanwhile, said everything has been running very dry in the Worthington area.
Because of the dryness, there’s more soybean breakage as it’s handled. While they’re seeing it at the elevator, Montag said farmers likely saw the worst of it from their combine.
“You get a lot more loss at the combine head where the beans are shattering,” he said. “You’ll also see some yield loss from natural shrinking out in the field — you’re losing some of that water weight.”
Montag said the same thing occurred with the corn crop during harvest.
On Monday, the cash corn price at New Vision Cooperative in Brewster was $4.02 per bushel, while soybeans were $9.48. On top of the low yields, the low prices are creating yet another challenge for producers.
“While we’ve struggled with weather problems and yield problems in our local area here in southwest Minnesota, the rest of the country is looking at a record corn crop and a near-record soybean crop,” Montag said.
It’s a classic tale of supply and demand — as the supply increases, the price drops.
“We saw a little bit of a rally here the last part of September, but then basically as the rest of the country got into full harvest, we’ve really seen futures prices retreat back to some of the lows we started to see pre-harvest.”
Montag said the region is at or near four-year lows on crop prices.
“It just kind of hurts more when you’re in a spot that has the bad yields,” he added.
If there is a silver lining to look for, Montag said low prices typically generate increased demand for U.S. commodities.
“The cure for low prices is low prices, so hopefully going forward we can continue to see strong export demand and strong domestic demand in the processing markets,” Montag said. “That should keep chewing through some of this big supply and, longer term, maybe help give us some bright spots to look forward to on futures prices.”
