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EC SoDak | Yeah, land is always a difficult one. I haven’t heard of any rents being negotiated down and investors are keeping land sales around record highs. That kind of creates a feedback loop, auction prices stay high with investor 1031 money, LLs say land prices are still high, so rents should stay high. This year’s market prices will probably tell the tale if rental acre opportunities start getting calls this summer/fall as landlords and farmers start really butting heads on rents.
Inputs I negotiated as much as I could. I’m still dealing with some grass issues and have some multiyear corn, so SS corn is needed. I’ll likely go back to conventional corn in 26. Conventional corn around 140/unit vs 275+/unit for SS+ adds up pretty quick. Equipment is what it is, my CPA is pretty low other than the harvest crew, so I’ll probably run some math as used equipment prices continue down so see if buying a combine and cart makes much sense or not. Insurance you could shave a bit, but with how dry it’s been since the water mostly shut off since the June monsoon and maybe getting 4” of snow so far this winter, I’m not sure that’d be wise.
I did spend some money to hopefully make some money. I started grid sampling vs zone (used zone for fertilizer purposes) and have started liming some ground. The ROI data looked promising, so we shall see. Mother Nature rules all.
All in all, we are at 4.56 for Dec25 currently, I can make decent money at that if I have an average crop. The biggest question is how much crop I’d want to hedge at that price. I already have some 4.XX Dec 25 hedges from last spring/summer on the books.
Met with my banker the other day, said on paper, lots of $100-200+ losses for the coming year. If realized, that’ll eat a lot of working capital folks have.
Good luck, everybody!
Edited by SoDak Farms 1/17/2025 14:58
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Where do farmers see cost cutting in their operations
