I\u2019ve had conversations with farmers this summer that include, \u201cThis is the best crop I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d Then we quickly remind each other that nothing is in the bin yet. Farmers can never appear to be exuberant. Restraint must be shown.<\/p>\n
Being a farmer means you are an odd mix of hopefulness yet filled with dread. You plant a crop or buy some feeder cattle. In either case, you\u2019ve gone long in the market. You hope for the best. All the while, you\u2019re aware of a hundred things that can go wrong.<\/p>\n
While there is time for harmful weather, pestilence, disease, terrorism, you-name-it, to attack these crops, they sure look good now.<\/p>\n
Dare I say it?<\/p>\n
They look perfect.<\/p>\n
Did I jinx us?<\/p>\n
By putting that into print, I may have. If things go bad, I take full responsibility.<\/p>\n
Not all are so fortunate. There have been fields that had too much rain, hail, and wind damage. As always, there but for the grace of God, go I.<\/p>\n
For much of southern Minnesota, a nice early planting season has been followed by well-timed rains and warmth, but not oppressive heat. Slightly cooler temps fell around pollination. It\u2019s as if a Hollywood corn producer scripted it.<\/p>\n
If, there\u2019s always the \u201cbig if,\u201d if we finish well, corn should easily go over two hundred bushels per acre. That number was just a pipe dream when I started this fifty years ago. Farmers are whispering about the best fields touching three hundred bushels per acre.<\/p>\n
There. I really jinxed us.<\/p>\n
I like to climb on the top of the bin to get the big picture. From there, I can see areas that drowned out or where corn is stunted or where the planter was pulling through a muddy spot.<\/p>\n
This year, it\u2019s nothing but perfect yellow tassels as far as eye can see. This is what\u2019s in your mind when you\u2019re planning the crop in January. But to see it look like this in August is the stuff of dreams.<\/p>\n
I thought of a song by Iowa singer Greg Brown. Brown writes loving and ironic songs about his home state. This part of Minnesota is sort of northern Iowa when it comes to the Corn Belt, so his songs connect here. He has a song called \u201cWalking the Beans.\u201d If you\u2019re my age, you remember that miserable activity.<\/p>\n
In another song, \u201cOut in the Country,\u201d Brown anthropomorphizes a field:<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a July cornfield far as you can see.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a July cornfield far as you can see.<\/p>\n
And if you be real careful, you can walk on top of me.<\/p>\n
(now speaking) Ah, you got to believe though. Now first you get your one foot up there, and then you gotta get your other foot up there. Easy now. You can do it.<\/p>\n
From on top of my bin, I believe I could walk across my field.<\/p>\n
It is one thing to grow a crop. It is another thing to make money at it. If you know a farmer, you\u2019ve heard prices are down and expenses are up. I just hauled in the last of my 2024 soybeans and settled for $9 a bushel. The $14 of a couple years ago is a distant, wistful memory.<\/p>\n
Oddly, we might grow the best crops we\u2019ve ever had and still collect from crop insurance. Most of us have \u201crevenue protection\u201d coverage now that guarantees a dollar amount rather than simply a yield guarantee like was in the past. I\u2019m not sure if we\u2019ll collect. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n
The bounteous conditions generally hold forth across much of the nation\u2019s midsection. A good-looking crop obviously puts downward pressure on prices. Supply and demand have a role to play. But then there are externalities that affect the market. One of those sits in the White House.<\/p>\n
Here I\u2019m going to talk about Mr. Trump. I have readers who don\u2019t like that. They should look away now.<\/p>\n
I truly don\u2019t want to talk about that man. But he really can never shut up a day. He craves attention. Here I am giving it to him. I guess he wins.<\/p>\n
There are two sides to the ledger when it comes to farming. There is the price you will receive and the expenses you will pay. Mr. Trump\u2019s fingerprints are all over both sides.<\/p>\n
First price. The head of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association wrote this:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crop is looking solid, but we need to get our soybeans moving. With zero sales going to China right now, it\u2019s going to put a lot of pressure on our farmers going into the fall, and it\u2019s going to cost farmers a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re paying attention, you know Trump\u2019s first administration damaged our traderelationship with China. Trump Two is doing everything to kill it. For the first time in two decades, China has not purchased any soybeans of our upcoming harvest.<\/p>\n
What does anyone expect?<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s daily if not hourly shifts on tariffs and bellicose statements make the United States anything but dependable.<\/p>\n
Groups like the Soybean Growers have made significant efforts to develop the Chinese market. Concurrently with that, acres of soybeans have increased. We grow soybeans in the Dakotas and northern Minnesota where we didn\u2019t before.<\/p>\n
Now China is pouring money into Brazil to increase their capacity and to be the reliable trading partner we aren\u2019t. I can\u2019t predict the future. But one can see a troublesome scenario where we have a lot of soybeans that aren\u2019t worth very much.<\/p>\n
On the opposite side of the ledger are our costs. The fertilizer I am booking now for next year is at all-time high. Guess what? Trump\u2019s tariffs, especially on Canadian potash, are a large part of that.<\/p>\n
In Trump One, to compensate for being in the cross hairs of trade disputes, farmers received \u201cTrump Payments.\u201d For which Trump took credit, and you taxpayers paid.<\/p>\n
Will there be payments this time?<\/p>\n
Those could be especially distasteful when cuts to foreign aid are literally causing deaths in places like Africa.<\/p>\n
Trump has said no one loves farmers as much as he does. He\u2019s got a funny way of showing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve had conversations with farmers this summer that include, \u201cThis is the best crop I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d Then we quickly remind each other that nothing is in the bin yet. Farmers can never appear to be exuberant. Restraint must be shown. Being a farmer means you are an odd mix of hopefulness yet filled with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 15:26:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143728,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143727\/revisions\/143728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}