Trent Has A Farmer’s Perennial New Year Hope
Trent Brandenburg is happy with the 2022 results of his farming operation. He looks forward to 2023 “if the prices stay up.” “With the cost of inputs going up, there can be a real squeeze. Farmland prices are high and slightly increasing, which means land investors think the prices will stay up long enough to pay for the land purchase.” Trent speculated that if corn were $2.00 nobody could afford a combine to harvest it. “You couldn’t even afford the diesel fuel to start a burnoff,” Trent wryly concluded.
Trent’s long experience with the challenges and rewards of cash grain farming in central Illinois has given him valuable persepctives on markets and weather and cropping, to maximize the profit from land he farms.
Recent rains at the end of the year have pushed December rainfall totals to near-normal. After zero weather over Christmas, temperatures in the 50s have partially thawed the upper few inches of soil, permitting rain and snowmelt to soak in and help alleviate the long-term abnormal dryness affecting the land Trent farms.
Trent Brandenburg and his family wish you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
More from The Field Report
Wild And Windy Winter Weekend
Trent Brandenburg and family endured a near miss yesterday as a tornado touched down a few miles from their home place. Tornadoes are a rare occurrence in December, but a "bomb cyclone" ripped through central Illinois yesterday. Houses were unroofed [...]
Dry Weather Speeds Harvest
Trent Brandenburg is trying to get his field work done "before it rains". Much of the area Trent farms is in "extreme drought" according to the Illinois Drought Monitor https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?IL map, which is updated every Thursday. The very dry soil [...]
In a Drought, but Corn is Too Wet to Harvest
The current Illinois drought map (11 September) shows severe drought in the northern 40% of Piatt County and moderate drought in the rest of Piatt and adjacent areas of neighboring counties. Trent Brandenburg has barely started harvesting because his corn [...]