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Area Corn Farmers Face a Double Hit: Low Yield, Prices

Posted on: Thursday, 25 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

Aug. 24--If low corn prices on the August crop report hold up, area farmers could face the ultimate double whammy -- low prices and not much to sell.

Often in times of drought, prices of a particular crop go up based on scarcity. So any crop at all brings good prices and decent revenue.

Unfortunately, although much of Illinois had drought conditions, national forecasters say that many areas will have good corn crops so prices may stay relatively low -- below $2.50 a bushel.

Jim Milleville, general manager of St. Clair Service Co. in Belleville, said the local corn crop should be quite a bit less than last year's record crop.

"It depends on where you're at," he said. "If you're lucky, you'll get an average crop. If you're not lucky, it will be below average."

Farmers might even get both in the same field.

"I think you could see yield ranges from 30 bushels to 140 bushels in the same field," said Mike Seger, plant manager for Madison County Service Co. in Marine. "A lot of cornfields did not pollinate well. The majority of Madison County looked great, but the yield won't be there. The last month and a half was awful."

Part of the reason for prices staying low is large stocks of corn, Milleville said.

"There was a record crop last year," he said. "Some farmers still have grain on storage to sell. They don't particularly market it all in one year."

Plus the people who buy corn, the corn processing companies, don't have much incentive to buy now and prod prices upward. They will wait and see what happens, he said.

David Biver, former St. Clair County Farm Bureau president who farms east of Freeburg off of Illinois 15, said he performed an ear count that roughly indicated a potential yield of about 130 bushels per acre, slightly above the 125 bushel state average predicted by state officials.

"But when I pulled ears and pulled the husks back, not all were filled out to the end," he said. "Some had the top three or four rows missing. We could be talking 20-30 percent loss.

"If that happens, there goes the profit. We'll be running the combine up and down the field for the view. What they used to call recreational farming."

Greg Guenther, a board member of the Mon-Clair Corn Growers, said "It's been a really strange year."

I pointed out that it seems like he says that every year.

"Farmers never really get a chance to be bored," he said. "It's something different every year."

As for the optimistic national report on corn production, he said that he has always heard that the people who release national crop reports don't like to shock the market with bad news so they tend to gradually release bad news a little bit at a time.

"I wouldn't be surprised in September when we get another report, if it says there's not quite as much there as we thought there was," he said. "If not, we'll have the worst of both worlds."

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Copyright (c) 2005, Belleville News-Democrat, Ill.

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Source: Belleville News-Democrat (Belleville, Ill.)

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