After a growing season last year filled with burdensome rainfall and bitter trade wars, American farmers hope that 2020 will give them a chance to make some land. Instead, the situation has become much worse because prices remain depressed.
Despite a windstorm that tore through Midwestern farms last week and drought conditions in isolated areas, a bumper crop of both corn and soybeans is still expected this year.
“Overall, the trade seems to be coming to the conclusion that … there will still be too much supply of corn in the US and in the world,” said Tomm Pfitzenmaier, an analyst at Des Moines, Iowa. based Summit Commodity Brokerage, in a research note Friday.
That case was exacerbated Friday when Pro Farmer, after a week-long tour of agricultural land across seven states, estimated the national yield of corn at 177.5 bushels per acre, and the national soybean yield at 52.5. That is slightly lower than previous estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but higher than the 2019 water-addicted crop.
For many American farmers, the prospect of low grain prices remains untenable. “It’s almost a day-to-day battle to decide what to do next year,” said Doug Sombke, president of the South Dakota Farmers Union and a farmer with 3,000 acres of corn and soybeans in Brown County, SD
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