2020 Fall Farm Outlook

PAGE 6 2020 Logan County Farm Outlook LINCOLN DAILY NEWS October 28, 2020 ethanol made from corn. The counterpoint to this is the increased need for hand sanitizer made from the ethanol. The livestock market has also been very interesting. There has been increased demand due to concern about shortages, while shortages have been occurring in some instances particularly due to virus outbreaks among the workers in processing plants. Some local producers had a short time of greatly increased orders. The local producers were able to fill orders to the extent local, small processing plants had capacity to take additional numbers. This quickly became an issue with some local plants booked out for several months. This is a story of plenty of raw product, but limited capacity to process it for consumption. With all of the things going on, what has the fall brought us? Yields for the most part have been good. Soybean yields are probably exceeding averages more often than corn yields from what I have heard. There probably won’t be any records set this year, but yields are still good in most locations. Some fields were impacted by the extremely wet conditions of the spring, and those yields will definitely be lower than normal. Prices have been working their way up with export news. While the extremely dry fall has been bad to provide the little bit of extra fill that would have increased yields, it has provided for ideal harvest weather. Of course a little bit of moisture might have helped prevent some fields with the soybean dust phenomenon. As we look forward to finishing up harvest, fall field work and fertilizer applications have also been going on in many locations. This is always a plus, as it helps temper the effects of a wet spring by keeping operations more timely. With more work to do in the fields this fall, be aware of the equipment on the roads – and be safe.