Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Soybean Prices.

OUCH!!!

Yeah, but corn and wheat are cheap as well. Talked to my nephew at church yesterday, and he is an ag lender. He was talking about how farmers are hurting with the low grain prices. Trump's tariffs haven't helped.

I can't even look any more...
I sold one bin for 10.20. Then sold out my other bin of seed beans...for 9.60.... Thought that was a bad decision ....guess not...I still have about 13 k bu...

Local prices have been in 8-8.25 range. That was the last couple of days.

Corn didn't have enough rain to make much here in the whole area this year.

Probably be a bit higher because of it, at least locally.

Milo looks to be doing well though.

After the summer of 1980, very little dry land farming has taken place in my part of Arkansas, except winter wheat and oats. If it can not be irrigated, it is wheat ground, pasture or hay. miles

Started to post this over on the Hunters Campfire, but knew it would start an argument, so thought maybe I didn't need to. Every farmer that I know voted for Trump, and they're all pretty upset about his tariffs that have affected grain prices, particularly soybeans. I'm not a big fan of tariffs, especially when they hurt one group as much as they help another.

Won't be near as bad as what Jimmy Carter did to the farmers. miles

I don't think any president could do as poorly as Carter did. He made some very poor decisions.

I don't like the notion of trade wars, but, but, all the Chinese imports are not a good thing for the country.

I don't think they will be long lasting, just a bargaining chip. Of course I could be wrong. Wife says that I often am. miles

I'll admit, I am protective of the interests of agriculture, and am often vocal about it. I was born on a farm, with my ancestors all being farmers. I married the daughter of a farmer, and her family still farms. I began farming in 1973, and farmed pretty much full time until 2001, working other jobs as well. In 2001, I started working at the post office full time, but still took care of the land I had that wasn't rented out. Today, I have cattle, and rent the cropland out to a neighbor. Even though I am drawing retirement money in the form of SS and USPS retirement, I still depend on my income from the farm. So, I am very much interested in the prices of grain and cattle, and anything else farm related.

Yes, we're screwed with our trade with China, and probably everybody else as well. We have shipped too much of our manufacturing overseas, and it's come back to haunt us. I don't pretend to know everything there is to know about trade deals, but I do know they can be very complicated. Farming never has been a steady way to make a living. It has too many ups and downs. The weather is either too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold. Prices are usually low if you have a good crop, and high if you don't have much of a crop to sell. Seed, chemical, and fertilizer costs keep rising, despite grain prices are going the other way. Cattle prices ride the roller coaster much like grain, and we farmers can't do a darn thing about it.

So, it does concern me when something the government does hurts the farm economy, and I don't think it would be any different if I were a steelworker, or in the auto industry, or anyplace else.......it hurts more if it's close to home. Maybe this will be a temporary thing, and something good will come out of it. Maybe Deere or Case-IH will lower the costs of the equipment, maybe the chemical companies will roll back their prices to 10 years ago. But, I wouldn't count on it, everybody knows that farmers will do what they've always done.......suck it up and go on about their business.

I too was raised on a farm, and still live on the farm that I was raised. It got too small for modern farming so now it is my hunting place. I have one Brother-in- law, that farms along with His two sons, and numerous cousins that farm, so I well aware of the problems. miles

Thought of this thread today!

Dad was giving me a hand with a project and I was riding with him back to his place for lunch...side benefit to having him help is Mom always feeds me lunch!....anyhow....fella that rents his place and about several adjoining places had a tractor there with a hay mowing blade on it. Dad said he thought the guy was going to mow all the beans for hay. I mentioned what I'd read here. The guy (family of farmers actually) uses most of Dad's place for cattle with only part of it in beans...but the adjoining lots, a couple hundred acres, are in beans.

I know dick about bean hay other than I helped a guy pick up bales after it was already in square bales once when I was a kid and it was some scratchy and heavy chit! ...It will be a lot of hay if that's what this guy does....

Question...will cut beans cut grow back for a second cutting or they done for? ...like I said I know dick about bean hay.

....part of what I rent to a guy gets rotated between beans and corn. Beans this year that were REALLY late and look like chit.

I do not think beans will grow back. Never seen it cut for hay, but when I was little they used to raise pea hay here. Field peas, but do not know the variety. miles

I've never cut any soybeans for hay, although they do make good hay. There are varieties that are grown specifically for hay, I do know that. If you cut them for hay, you might get some regrowth, but it would not be anywhere near enough for a second cutting. I've seen places in a beanfield where the groundhogs or rabbits had eat the young beans down to the ground, and after they were killed, the beans would grow back out. But, that's not like mowing them down for hay after they are fully grown.

I've also seen people bale the bean straw after the beans were combined. We did it after the first crop of soybeans I ever grew. Made some decent hay.

Friend of mine used some of the post-combined stalks for hay a couple of years ago after a really dry summer that hurt regular hay. He told me cattle ate it ok but a lot of it ended up being wasted when the round bales would fall apart when they tried to move them.

Last week I saw several South Dakota grain elevators with big mounds of grain sitting in the weather still. Lot of carry-over from last harvest. A few of the mounds looked like beans from the road.

The Trump tariffs aren't the main reason for falling grain, specifically soybean, prices.

The USA has millions upon millions of tons of carryover stocks from the past few years, and this year's crop of soybeans and corn looks like a bin-buster unless we get some horrible harvest weather. As such, there will be even more excess crop around and prices aren't going to rebound until those excess stocks are used up. Couple of years at least.

Chinese tariffs have almost nothing to do with it. If the Chinese buy beans from elsewhere, then those who would have bought those beans will buy ours instead. Six of one, half dozen of another.

Any good soybean farmer contracted at least half his expected harvest already at the good prices available this spring, so they will be in okay shape. Those who don't bother contracting ahead, or are greedy and wanted to get even more, will be hurting this fall. Next spring is going to be a tough call on grain farmers, as barring a major harvest catastrophe somewhere in the world over the winter, the excess stocks aren't going to be eaten-up by anyone by next spring. Low prices should be expected.

Farmers in the USA mostly, and the good ones elsewhere in the world, are simply too good at what they do (producing lots of food). They can never create a true scarcity of supply.