How are the crops growing in the Midwestern United States?

Jun 07, 2016

Have your corn and soybean fields featured in a 2016 Farms.com Risk Management Crop Tour video!

Every growing season brings its own set of challenges. Will corn prices go up or down this year? How is the weather impacting yields? Did farmers get all of their acres planted and did some farmers switch some corn acres back to soybean after the recent spike in soybean prices? How will the weather, the yields, and other factors, such as disease or fertilizer and nitrogen needs and prices, impact the price of corn and soybeans this year?

For the fifth consecutive year, the team at Farms.com Risk Management will visit 12 states in 17 days to attempt to answer these questions with first-hand knowledge, so that farmers can get a better understanding of crop growth and the potential for commodity prices.

Farms.com Risk Management’s Moe Agostino, Chief Commodity Strategist, will visit U.S. Midwestern states with a high concentration of corn and soybeans; states such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan, to assess farm fields to forecast grain prices. The Farms.com Risk Management 2016 5th Annual U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour will take place June 25 to July 11, 2016.

The information gathered on the tour allows the Farms.com Risk Management team to anticipate the size of the corn and soybean crops early in the growing season, so that they can give farmers better insight into where prices are heading over the next several months. This information can help farmers determine if they should book corn and soybean prices early, or wait until later in the growing season.

“When to book the price of their crop is a decision that can impact a farmer’s bottom line by tens of thousands of dollars,” says Agostino. “So it is critical for farmers to gather as much information as they can. We conduct this fact finding tour on behalf of farmers every year.”

This year, the Risk Management Team is inviting farmers to volunteer to have their corn and soybean fields be part of the crop tour. If you would like to volunteer to have your farm included on the 5th Annual U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour, simply complete the online form at: riskmanagement.farms.com/tourvolunteer. By applying, you may also be selected to be in one of the daily Corn Belt Crop Tour videos.

The 2016 5th Annual U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour sponsors include Penta Equipment, Pride Seeds, and of course, Farms.com. For more information on the 2016 U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour, visit riskmanagement.farms.com/tour. Follow the tour on Twitter by using #cornbelt16, or download the US Corn Belt Crop Tour from the Apple App Store or Google Play.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.