Harvest season has come to a virtual close here in Iowa and some farmers are now faced with the decision of either storing their grain or selling it off.

Iowa State University Extension Field Agronomist Mike Witt says he’s been telling farmers to store more of their high quality grain and sell the poor-quality because weather conditions weren’t typical to pull the poor-quality grain through the winter months in order for it to sell later on. Another problem is with the current tariffs and trade talks with China concerning soybeans. Witt says due to that issue, if farmers try to sell soybeans now, they would get a lower price.

“If they knew that by going into next year that the prices are probably going to be low, they can adjust inputs and they can change some things. But right now their bottom line is that they can’t do that. You need to make up that money in your short liquid cash because you have money and you have bills to pay. Therefore, you might have to sell more corn than you would anticipate selling in order to make up for that.”

Witt adds that those kinds of decisions can impact a farmer’s decision on how much grain they store and when they choose to sell it.