Harvest started for us much earlier than expected. The first corn we took out was on the the 13th of September. Unfortunately, the Tar Spot disease issues we discussed in our last web update have seemed to cause much more damage than predicted. At that time, we were anticipating corn yields to be above average. We now have over 1000 acres of corn harvested and yields have been average and below. Grain moisture levels came down quick and very little drying has been required. It looks like the Tar Spot caused much of this corn to die before reaching full maturity and cost us 10 to 15% in yield. This disease is new to our area and will need to be a focus of our management going into next year. We have just under 300 acres of corn harvest left.
We have not harvested any soybeans yet, but still have high hopes for better than average yields in that crop. Markets for both crops have remained friendly. Locally cash corn has hovered around $5.00/bu and soybeans near $12.00. New crop markets for 2022 have done the same. Input costs for the 2022 crop continue to rise. Fertilizer prices, which were up over 50% versus last year, are up another 10-20% from where we made our first purchases a month ago.
We’ve had some wet weather this week that has allowed us to catch up on some office work and getting the equipment serviced. Let’s hope for some more dry weather to get the soybean harvest going here soon.
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