What should I do?

What should I do or how should I farm? It is not a question that I can really answer. It is a question that a person needs to answer for themselves. The question I can help with is to make sure whether you are looking at no-till, organic, all corn, rotations of corn, wheat, beans, more acres, or less acres that you do the best job possible with that type of farming to get the best yield with the least cost.

Every type of farming has advantages and disadvantages. One of the keys is the type of management you like to do. If you want to do no-till but do not want to check fields closely on a regular basis, this may not be the way for you. What works for your neighbor may not work for you, but a good farmer is always watching others to try to get ideas on how to do better.

I think the big question for the future, however, is going to be how can I hold input costs down and try to keep cost of production down? With the present costs that I would figure on corn, I would have a hard time raising corn for less than $3.75 for break even. If I looked at soybeans with the present costs, I would look at a minimum of about $9.00 to break even. Most of these cost do not have labor figured in them and I am only using a land charge of $150.00 per acre which may be high or low depending on where you view it. With today’s input prices, $2.00 corn and $5.00 beans would take a lot of farmers out of production real quick. I think this is a year to look at locking in a profit when you can because prices may go higher or lower.

With these high input costs we are at higher levels on cost of production and in a very interesting market picture. In some cases the market is not being driven by supply as in the past. There is a whole host of other factors like the price of oil, which is a big factor in costs and the market. These also are very interesting times in farming just as it is in the rest of the economy. I would look at the market and prices and if you can make a profit it may be time to lock some grain for next year if we would hit a good rally it may be time to take some profit and sell part of your crop.