It’s been a rough harvest season for Greene County farmers and for some, it still isn’t over.

West Central Cooperative Field Agronomist Scott Shannon says farmers are on their eighth week of harvest season.  Typically the harvest season is completed by the second week of November.  He explains one reason why the harvest season has lasted so long.

“The main thing that people have been fighting a lot here in the Greene County area this year has been mud.  A lot of ruts got made, a lot of people got stuck early on, a lot of spots that they had to leave and come back and get.  So that’s been the story of this harvest season is just fighting through the mud.”

Despite the delay in the harvest, Shannon points out that crop yields are better than expected.  Soybeans are between 50-60 bushels per acre and corn is around 200 bushels per acre.  Last year, soybeans were around 40 bushels and corn was between 160-180 bushels per acre.

However, Shannon notes that the low price of corn will hurt some farmers who have high yields.  Two years ago, corn was at $7 per bushel and last year it was around $5.  This year, the price of corn is between $2-$3.  He states that the input prices haven’t been reset yet and he describes what other factors have gone into establishing the lower price.

“Between logistical issues with the rails and just some other supply issues; a lot of our fertilizer has been steady, so that really puts a budget crunch on our producers that have seen a drastic cut in their commodity prices and haven’t seen a reset on input prices yet.”

He believes this trend will remain for another year and that corn prices won’t recover to where they were two years ago, but he’s hopeful it will go back up.

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