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NE Colorado | I'm not as old as some of our distinguished posters here but this is the second time in my life I've seen grain prices move like they are now.
I was just out of high school in 1973 when Russia started buying wheat and oh boy, when it hit $3 we couldn't believe it. It later went over 5 and close to six I think. My old man bought me a new car for $4,200 that year, which cost a little over a thousand bushels of wheat. Had I any durum wheat at $16 I might be able to do the same again, though it would have to be a plain small car this time.
Wheat certainly has been under priced the past several years. I've been looking for alternatives to wheat and have found a few that work. However, wheat stubble provides some much desired residue on my fields and if not for that I may have given up on growing wheat completely.
Of course, at these prices I'm interested in growing wheat again and I planted a few hundred acres more than I originally intended. But with all of the problems we have had growing wheat in recent years, ranging from extreme drought to severe hail to frost at flowering time to never before seen stripe rust, not to mention various insect pressures, it's hard for me to expect a big harvest on my farm. But with these prices I don't need top yields to make a little money.
I'm going to keep looking for alternatives to wheat as I don't expect these prices to last forever, I just hope there is a higher floor when they do collapse this time around. And I hope it takes awhile for the downturn to happen, I sure do enjoy seeing wheat prices at their current levels.
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Reminds me of the 70's
