Notes from the road.....

I thought I would step out of my normal blogging on family, employee and management issues and forward a few observations and notes from conversations with producers across the midwest.  My travels this spring and summer have taken me to most of the parts of the country that have seen weather extremes, so I thought I'd share what I've seen and heard.  These comments are all anecdotal, so use them at your own discretion.....

 --In speaking with a seed sales rep in the central/eastern Iowa area, they cut off re-seeding beans in the flooded areas on July 10.  The reason being that even if they do come up, the same areas that are prone to flooding are the same areas prone to an early frost......

 --Grain producers in eastern Nebraska have seen very good, even rains and some have not irrigated at all, except for some fertilizer application.  Normally these areas would start the irrigation pumps in early May and rarely shut them off until mid-August.  My clients tell me that their center pivots typically cover 160 acres and use 800 gallons of diesel per week, which would give them about 1.5" of water.  This rain is saving them TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars each week.

--One of the biggest frustrations that I hear from livestock producers is that they have no point of reference, no historical patterns to base any decisions or trends on, and no sense of where prices could actually go.  For some of them, this is the first time in their business that they feel unable to develop a sound business strategy, marketing strategy or purchasing strategy.

 --Whether it is Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska or Kansas, it seems that for the most part corn is 7 to 10 days behind schedule, and beans are 2 to 3 weeks behind (except for those heavily flooded areas that are much later)

--Reports are that crops are uneven at best, and scouting reports are extremely variable.

 --I live in central Indiana which is very flat prairie land, and even though we did not see the heavy flooding in our area, we do have significant ponding losses.  This is not uncommon in these areas due to the flat land and the inability of tile to take the water away fast enough, but this year will be worse and some fields will have 10% losses in acreage--but not in all fields.  Making up for this, though, is that quite often when there is flooding in these flat areas, the rain that caused the flooding provided good growing conditions for the rest and nearly makes up for those ponding losses.  The bottom line--this just adds to the challenge of predicting yields.

--There would normally be a fair amount of double-crop beans this year--but I have seen none in our area.....and there was more wheat than in a typical year....

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Again, just some observations, so consider them at your own discretion....

Have a great week!
Don Tyler