Ill give a bit of a different opinion, we have been in a similar situation. I say for that amount of acres, and with things the way they are right now, I would stay at it, just put your head down and do whatever he wants, but keep trying. We started combining for a guy probably 15 years ago now, and he was big into notill, but didnt believe in fertilizer and that roundup and 2-4D were the greatest thing ever. Well he died, and his son, who had retired from the army took over, along with his mom, hes in his 50s and hadnt done much farming his whole life. Well they asked if we would just custom plant and harvest it, and we agreed, but they did a horrible job to say the least. They are both very intelligent, but not farmers, almost too smart for their own good if you know what I mean. They wouldnt get it sprayed because they were worried that the coop would screw them over, and all that kind of stuff. At one point I know he was trying to spray 100 acres of beans with a bunch of 4wheeler sprayers in the back of a pickup. That year we got less than 1000 bushels off 100 acres, and tons of weed seeds. One year they didnt plant anything becuase they were convinced that they would beat a drought. Every year we would try and convince them to just let us either rent it or at least make the decisions, but in the end we would just put our head down and do it the way they wanted. Its a good thing they dont hurt in the money department or theyd have been broke, they would complain about things costing so much and not getting any return, and wed pitch to them again. Wed have soil tests down at our expense trying to show them what they were missing, it helps we farm some ground not too far from theirs and would talk about crops in general and mention how ours had done. Well finally they started to listen, they put down a little fertilizer the first year, and got the coop to burn down the mass of weeds once, and the crops did better, and the next year they put some more on, and sprayed it twice, and they got better still. Weve finally convinced them that we know what were doing and that they can trust us. So now we basically run the show, from some of the hybrid selection (they still pick the corn hybrid) to telling the coop when and what to spray, to harvesting it.

We see custom work as a guarenteed paycheck on those acres, this year we stand to make $60/acre for just planting and harvest, minus our cost of course, plus trucking the crop to the elevator 20 miles away, reguardless of what commodity prices are. I know they year we took 1 truckload, we are the only ones that made any money on that. Ours is less than 200 acres, and they have no problem paying up, but Id jump at 500 acres of guranteed money, even if its a little slow.