The report from field to field and farm to farm is the same — soybean yields are amazingly high, even those that followed wheat.
“This is probably the best year I’ve had,” said Craig Mentzer, who farms north and east of Neosho Falls, and he’s been at it full time since the late 1970s.
Between Iola and Humboldt, “It’s a superb year,” said Shawn Geffert. The real corker for Geffert is, in addition to typical high yields from full-season beans, those he planted after wheat did so well. “Some last year made 35 bushels (on his fertile bottom ground) but this year are in the high 40s and low 50s,” unheard of hereabouts.
South of Humboldt, Garry Daniels, whose soybean fields the Register visited a few week ago, gushes as much as any. Earlier this week, as son Dan was finishing a field, Daniels said it was making nearly 50 bushels — on upland — the best he ever had done on that parcel of land.
He salivates thinking about what the soybeans on prize bottom ground, not quite ready for harvest, will produce.
Yields in the 50-60 bushel range are common; some jump into the 70s — not just good, but fantastic.
Smiles are all around, except when corn is the subject. Corn yields were good enough, above — some well above — 100 bushels an acre, but the price languished to the point that it was hard to make money with input costs of at least $300 an acre.
“Corn pretty much washed out,” Mentzer said.
The cost of putting in soybeans? For him, Mentzer said, it was about the same as corn. “We had to spray (for worms) as much as three times and weeds were a problem, with the wet weather they kept coming back,” he said. But nary a farmer complained about getting rain, even in too generous amounts, in July and August.
For soybeans, “the weather was the best you’ll see,” Geffert said, quite an admission for farmers, who usually tend to be reserved. An inch of rain a week during the growing season is perfect and no time this summer missed the mark by more than a few days.
Bean prices have held steady at above $9 a bushel, even crept up a little this week. Consequently, at 50 bushels an acre, that’s $450, which gives producers a leg up on making a good profit. At 60 bushels or more, all the better.
Geffert watches market and weather reports like a hawk.
So why, he is asked, does the price of beans hold steady, and even rise, during what promises to be widespread bumper harvest?
More markets than ever. It’s the old supply and demand equation, with demand rising in a bull market.
Some beans locally go to the bio-diesel plant at Deerfield, Mo., where they fetch a premium, but some back off — Mentzer for one — because unloading facilities are so crowded “you sometimes have to wait six or eight hours.” That burns fuel and time and cuts into the premium. Also, road time and wear and tear, although not great on a single trip, does add up.
Third-world countries “are developing more of a taste for protein,” Geffert explained, which opens more international markets.
