Confident Corn Growers
Posted: June 30, 2008
The USDA Planted Acreage report out Monday was good news, although it did not totally reflect the damage from Midwest flooding yet.
Corn planted area is reported to be 1.31 million acres more than was estimated in the March intentions report at 87.3 million acres, down just 7 percent from last year. That is the second highest since 1946, behind last year’s total of 93.6 million acres. If it were all to make it, growers would harvest 78.9 million acres for grain, down 9 percent from 2007 and the second highest since 1944.
NASS collected most of the data for the report before the majority of the flooding occurred but they did re-interview about 1,200 farmers at the end of the month in the flood-affected areas. Through that it was determined that farmers intend to harvest about two percent less, or 90.4 percent, of their planted acres of corn for grain.
I had the opportunity to chat with a few corn growers Friday night at a benefit concert for Farm Foundation held at the Lake Ozark home of Sara Wyant (Agri-Pulse) and husband Allan Johnson (USDA Rural Development). Garry Niemeyer of Illinois and and Ken McCauley of Kansas were two of the growers at the event. Ken, who is the chairman of the National Corn Growers, says his corn in Northeast Kansas looks good. “If you’re sitting there with flood water, you don’t want to go to northeast Kansas, because it looks really good,” Ken told me. “We have had some hail, we have had some wind, but overall I think we can make it through because we do need a big corn crop.”
“I tell you what, everybody is going to produce some corn,” Ken says. “Iowa will produce a lot of corn and when you get down to it we’re gonna have a good corn crop and it could even be one of the better one or two or three.”
“I really think we’re gonna get through this and farmers are going to look back and say ‘what a year!’”
Listen to my interview with Ken here: