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CENTRAL ILLINIOS | PP is a pretty rare in my part of Illinois. I am like another poster above in that I only remember a couple fields of PP in my life around here. In 2009 we had a more localized spring from hell like this year except we had the N down in the fall. We got a few fields planted early but then it was too wet to do anything until the Wednesday before Memorial Day. We ran almost non stop, I remember shutting down the planter tractor at 3am Sunday night/Monday morning when the lightning got really bad. I think we were pretty close to done with corn and a few had some beans in. Then it rained 4 or 5 inches then another inch or two on Tuesday, essentially drowning out everything we had just planted. When the corn came up you could see every tile line in the field because the corn survived in a strip ten or twenty feet wide right above the tile but the rest did not.
One thing about farming in June is it dries out a lot faster after a rain than in April. We replanted most of that corn and then got the beans in by the end of June and it stayed wet most of the summer so we had decent yields(180) but wet corn at harvest which we are not set up for - everyone sitting around waiting on the dryers. 175 to 180 bushel corn times todays price ($3.98 is our harvest bid today)is going to keep most guys planting if possible. $400 PP payment won’t much more than pay the rent and insurance here.
So in answer to your question I think there will be a lot of corn planted here when it dries up but I don’t know about the areas with shorter growing seasons. Also I still think we could see a setback in the markets when that planting progress number gets over 80%, not because it should(while 180 bu corn is not bad, it’s not the 230 - 250 it takes to get Illinois to a 200 bu average). It will set back because it always does. Will that be a buying opportunity- depends on summer weather, demand, swine flu, ect. | |
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Any of you, "The crop gets planted every year..." types out there?
