55 Years And Counting From The Tractor Seat

By Bill Whitman

 With August gone and crops ripening, our fall work is about to begin. Planning that work and making decisions about the coming year are crucial, especially this year.

This has been a crazy year for the weather here in the Midwest. How this will affect harvest is anyone’s guess. It does appear that the excess moisture we’ve received this year is making way for a good crop. The downside is that prices are dismal, at best. I spent the spring and early summer thinking that the bottom for corn was $4 and soybeans was $10. As of this writing, beans have come back a tad over $10 but corn remains on a downward slide.

With so many of us on the edge during the second year of sub-breakeven prices, it’s clear that business as usual will not pay the bills. One thing that strikes me as something we need to do is address grain storage. There are hundreds if not thousands of old 10-15,000-bushel bins sitting empty. Considered small by today’s standards, they may provide the storage we need to manage grain sales to our advantage. Simple math, a 10 cent move upward on corn means $1,000 in real money. With local prices around $3.50 a bushel, it is reasonable to expect a 25-cent movement upward in the next three-six months, maybe by the end of harvest. That’s $2,500 in real money for every 10,000 bushels of corn. If you have 500 acres of corn that produces the national average of 176 bushels per acre, that’s 88,000 bushels of corn. That’s $22,000 available with storage alone. I think we’ll see $4 corn next spring. Now we’re $44,000 in real money. Is $22,000 worth looking throughout the neighborhood for empty, dormant bins?

So, what else can we do? Go over your harvest equipment and replace everything worn and suspect. While an initial expense, it can/will save you repairs that will be larger in scope as parts failures have a ripple effect, causing other failures as well. In addition, if you can avoid breakdowns “in harvest,” the time you save is often of greater value than the cash expense.

We will also need to use the ROI (Return On Investment) model for virtually every decision we make. Every decision is about placing “convenience and comfort” at the bottom of the list of requirements. Frankly, I’ve been concerned about how many young farmers have continued to spend money on vacations, etc., that is money spent from a no profit position. I get that we have a couple generations that grew up in an environment of entitlement. The money was available, and we could choose to spoil our families, a bit. What these two generations don’t realize is the years of sacrifice that preceded the last couple of decades. And as always, the good times won’t last forever and these expensive luxuries are fleeting, only momentarily satisfying.

Before you think I am against family events, I am not. I believe that if you utilize less expensive options for recreation, in years like this one, the likelihood of creating memories of much more meaning is more likely. Renting a camper and taking a road trip will allow you to spend quality time that is not being orchestrated by some business trying to get more money out of your billfold. More profitable times will come again, and you can take advantage of cruises and resort vacations then. From personal experience, your family will find many more memories in personal time than commercial.

Horse Sense: Can’t get done until you start.

IndianaAg@bluemarble.net