Corn or Beans This Year?

While Norfolk County sees some of the lowest temperatures to hit in recent years, Argentina has been experiencing a 100 degree heat wave until recently.  This has caused a temporary price increase on Corn and Wheat but Soybeans have remained under pressure.  Both Corn and Soybeans have seen their prices drop over last years highs.

The price of Maize on Monday was $5.03/bu while Soybeans were at $13.97/bu.  Norfolk's sand typically produces 150/bu per acre of Corn and 40/bu per acre of Soybeans. 

$754.50 / ac of Corn as compared to $558.80 / ac in Soybeans - gross.  With input costs to produce Corn much higher than beans, what will you grow this year?

According to a recent survey by farmfuture.com producers are ready to slash down corn production to 92.23 million acres, down 3.7% from the total USDA estimated in November.  Even with these production cuts it would make this the 4th largest corn crop since World War 2.

It's estimated that 82.34 million acres of beans will be grown in 2014, up 7.6 over 2013 and the largest crop ever produced.

Total wheat acreage increased to 57.64 million, up 2.6%. Winter wheat acres will be up less than 1%, to 43.3 million.

Cattle futures have risen since before Christmas.  Smaller shipments are being sent to market to keep prices up but could drop if consumers push back against the high prices and traders continue to take profits.

With the cold weather Hog producers have held off shipments and US producers have expected shortages because of the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus.  Hog prices are starting to drop after reaching a 7 week high.

Chicken consumption in the US is climbing at the expense of beef but with Canadian chicken prices being the highest in North America at our grocery stores it's unlikely to have the same effect on beef prices.

Fertilizer prices for Nitrogen and Phosphorous continue to climb while Potash has not found it's bottom yet.

A craze started in the Irish Farming Journal where farmers were asked to send pictures of them and their livestock has gone hog wild.  A #felfie as it's called.  In just over a year the Felfie facebook page now has 23,657 likes and images of farmers from around the world.  Hopefully some Norfolk County farmers are contributing and feel free to send your felfies to norfolkvoice@gmail.com.