What I’ve Learned About Farming

Some of you have asked questions about the farm.  I thought there might be more of you who are curious, so I’ll try to answer in the blog.

Even before we got to Illinois, I knew that my Mom was smart, but since we’ve been here, I saw firsthand that she is “Out standing In Her Field”. 

Thought I’d start with a little farm humor.  Ha Ha!!   

Just to the right of her is her childhood home.

As you can see, corn is a very tall plant and usually has 2 ears per stalk.  Here is Mom with some corn that was still in the field.

This year Midwest farms have been very productive.  In fact, so productive that the grain elevators and on farm storage isn’t enough.  We’ve seen piles of grain like this in several places.  This pile is about the length of a football field and is about the size we’ve been seeing in other places.  A few have been even bigger.  The sides holding this pile are about 12 feet high.  As you can see, the grain is deeper in the middle.

The bad thing for farmers is that the price that they are getting per bushel is WAY down. In 2011, they were able to sell their grain for as much as $7.50 Per bushel.  If they sell now, they will get about $3.15 Per bushel.  Much of the grain that is going to the elevators now has been sold ahead on contract for “fall delivery”.  Farmers who sold in April for Fall Delivery are getting around $3.50.   At first I thought that most people would sell ahead because that seems like the thing to do.  However, I learned that isn’t always the best.  Some years, the price goes up closer to harvest, so it’s better to wait.

Besides selling ahead for “fall delivery” (September-November), farmers choose to sell ahead on contract for delivery in a future month.  That may be for delivery as soon as December or even into 2017.  That can get them an additional 20 cents or more per bushel but requires on farm storage.  Some years, there is an even greater difference between fall price and price for later delivery.  The man that will be farming some of Mom’s land next year built additional storage at his farm this last summer.  The big bin stores 150,000 bushels of grain.  He has room for three more bins like that and hopes to build them over the next few years.  He farms a lot of land besides Mom’s.  About 7,000 acres in total.

I thought the process of harvesting the grain was pretty interesting.  Almost all corn these days is shelled as part of the picking process.  A combine goes through the field and draws the ear and the rest of the stalk inside.  The corn kernels get separated and go into a hopper behind the cab and the rest is waste that goes through a chopper as it comes out the back.  The stalks and cobs have nutrients still in them and they are composted back into the soil.  Here is a picture of a combine as it is finishing a round in the field.  This combine can pick 12 rows in one trip across the field.  A new combine like this has a list price of around $500,000.  A new 12 row head (the front corn picking part) is priced separately and has a list price of over $100,000.  Some combines can do as much as 30 rows in one pass across a field. 

 This is a picture of a field that has been picked with the chopped stalks and cobs on the ground.

When the hopper gets full (300-400 bushels on a combine of this size), some farmers stop to empty it into a parked grain cart (wagon) or semi and it gets hauled to on farm storage or to a grain elevator.  Sometimes a 2^nd person will drive a tractor pulling a grain cart alongside the combine and the combine will unload the grain as it continues picking more.  This is a combine that is still picking, as it is also unloading into the cart.

The big thing that I learned is that a farmer's Pot of Gold is at the end of the Rainbow.