industry takes a beating

an agricultural season is an iffy sort of thing...all sorts of variables...wind, drought, hail, locusts, too wet to plant...manifold paths to disaster...or success...it is what it is and this season hasn't changed all that much since i last wandered out into the industrial fields mostly because, beyond the possibility of weather related factors it couldn't..may was too wet to plant and that set the agenda...so, just like last post, most of the planted fields here are soybeans...

some dense yellow #2 did make it in and what was planted seems to be doing well...acres of corn cities with the residents packed in in ever increasing densities...i would be willing to wager those plants are no more than two to four inches apart in rows thirty inches apart...the gene wizards at monsanto can make the plants behave in clearly unnatural ways...buffalo bird woman would have none of that "if the corn hills were so close together that the plants, when they grew up, touched each other, we called them 'smell-each-other'; and we knew that the ears they bore would not be plump or large." [wilson 1917]...modern agriculture counts on it...

and there are still a considerable number of fields that went unplanted and have been plowed under several times seemingly to control the growth of "native plants"...basically an exercise in fuel consumption, greenhouse gasses, and erosion...and the natives keep returning...what has changed, remarkably from my perspective, is commodity prices...soybeans are down $40.78 per metric ton from their closing price for july...understandable given current trade policies evinced by the nation's leadership..more puzzling is dense yellow #2 is down $37.16 a metric ton since july and has been falling since the usda released its corn acreage estimate...something doesn't add up here...someone has a distorted view...either i have a very local anomaly going on or the usda has cooked the books...it will all shake out come autumn and the harvest...a month or two yet.

stalled industry

near four tenths of an inch of rain yesterday brings the months total to approximately two and four tenths inches give or take a few hundredths...

and, while this morning's sky looks threatening, it may just be a threat...that doesn't help out much in the industrial fields however...threat or no threat things are getting dodgy..

there are still many acres that have not seen farm equipment yet this season...

and there is water standing in both fields that have not been worked...

and those that have...

i did find planted fields...given the small number i covered i would not want to make any large scale guesses ( and they would be guesses ) about how many fields have actually been worked locally...however it seemed about a fifty-fifty split between planted and unplanted in what i saw...i had a difficult time discerning what these are from the roadside...looks like beans to me...i have been wrong before though...

this is unmistakably a field of dense yellow #2...even at a distance...the only one i could identify with any certitude..."knee high by july" may be wishful thinking here...

and that was directly across the road from one that has been fallowed...probably by the weather...it is late in the season fior planting beams, much less field corn...some people are worried and it is showing...

may corn futures were up $9.59 a metric ton...

and yesterday's settlement price was even higher...looking for a price increase in the popular and wholly extruded hot pockets soon.

wet...fallow...late...eroded

this...call it fifteen hundredths of an inch...rain from the first of june brings my back yard total since may first to 10.55"...rather a lot actually...and there is a possibility of more rain later this week which is not especially good news for industrial farming hereabouts...

admittedly there are a number of farmers around here who have begun to use "no till" methods and it would be a bit difficult to tell just yet if they had been planted...however i have been watching these particular fields for a number of years and they have always been plowed in the past...

the field behind the big box stores ( which by the way are mostly closed now...i don't get out that way too much these days ) is fallow as well...then again there have been years when it was not planted and that didn't have anything to do with rain...perhaps a less reliable barometer of planting than the more rural fields...still we will be looking in on it until we are certain it is not going to be planted...

you can clearly see where water collected and sat before it dried...

and even more clearly where it still is collected...

all that collected water had to run off form somewhere and when it did it washed down topsoil and cut through berms which is another can of worms in the fields...the agronomists at purdue university say that "late planting" accounts for only a twelve to sixteen percent drop off in harvests...one supposes there must be a consensus definition of "late" but i do not seem able to find it...the usda seems less sanguine and according to index mundi the price of a metric tonne of dense yellow #2 on may thirty-first was $33.79 higher than it was on april thirtieth..a commodity price ( along with soy beans and soybean oil ) worth watching over the summer and into harvest.

in the field

a different job has me n a different commute and it is one that takes me through the rural/suburban nexus and past any number of fields of industrial agriculture...this time of year most of them look like these...stubble...or, inexplicably, newly turned...but not all...

more than one i met along the way home...

had significant acreage of dense yellow #2 in the field...there were no beans ( and we will be getting back to soybeans in a minute )...the daily price of corn is up $4.60 a metric ton over the close of october...and i can probably safely assume we are waiting for the price to rise a bit more before bringing the rest of the crop in..beyond the odd starving deer ( nothing with any other sort of food source would eat this stuff ) munching an ear not much harm can come to it...soybean prices have been somewhat volatile of late..they are up some at $338.68...about twelve bucks a ton more than last time i had a close look..but still $55 down on october's close...commodities seem to be taking a beating...good thing the president has set aside $12 billion to ease the cost of a trade war he started.