October 7 2008

October 7, 2008

Greetings,

No lack of uncertainty out there today! Most people in the country who have retirement portfolios are watching them evaporate. Many of the commodity prices are half or less of highs set only a few months ago. The good news is that fertilizer prices are edging down. Good only if you have not pre bought. Farming is starting look like taking a vacation in a luxury resort that is filled with land mines! If you would have contracted corn at $7 and not bought inputs life would look pretty darn good right now!

Things on the farm have been going well. We got the soybeans off last weekend just before the rain. The yields were on par with the area, around 30. \Soybeans 2008 Click the link if you would like to see the plot yields. Some plots were getting a little green from wild oats and dandelion. I need to check the records to see if the green plots are the ones that did not get Valor last fall. I plan on using a fall Valor-Round Up-2-4D application again this year on plots that will be soybeans and flax. The winter wheat is coming along very well. Soybeans finished early this year so we were able to plant winter wheat in them very timely. We plant a new numbered variety in the beans this year so it will be fun to see how that turn out. Smokey Hill is the winter wheat variety in the rest of the plots that has shown high yield but is not as winter hardy as other currently grown varieties. The stubble height is good this year so I thought it would be good to try Smokey Hill and see how it works. The fall seeded alfalfa looks wonderful again this year even without bailing the straw off. There was a pretty heavy amount of straw but and seeding the straw was dry so seed was delivered to the soil surface. The alfalfa is Dairyland Hybriforce 400 and seems to perform very well. All we have left to harvest is the corn and that will be a ways off. It looks pretty dry but people who have done some hand shelling are ending up with pretty high moistures so it will be awhile. We still have not had a hard freeze yet.

One note to pass on- it appears some of the new CRP rates are pretty competitive with current rental rates. The opportunity may be there to sign up some land the has been prone to wetness in the past years that was only feasible to work with because of prevented plant insurance payments. All the details are not quite finished yet but it may be worth checking out.

Have a good week.

Kelly Cooper- farm manager