View From the Cab

DECATUR, Ill. (DTN) -- The heat was on in central Kentucky this past week and it was urging corn toward a finish. At Affinity Farms, near New Haven, yield checks in early planted corn revealed some at 23% moisture on Aug. 29, but later-planted corn still had some cooking to do.

Quint Pottinger and crews have been busy getting harvest equipment ready in anticipation. Part of that included starting days early to avoid the blistering afternoon heat. "The weather swings have been crazy. We've knocked off about 2 o'clock (p.m.) a couple of times this week to keep out of it and to rest up before launching into what we anticipate will be a prolonged harvest season," said Pottinger.

Dan Lakey can talk all about weather shifts. This week the southeastern Idaho farmer went from dripping sweat during the day to worrying about frost. He knows his northerly fields dipped to 28 degrees Fahrenheit overnight. "The irrigation pipe in my neighbor's hay field still had ice around it this morning," he said on Aug. 29. Not to worry -- temperatures were expected to nudge 90 F just one day later.

"You know, we don't get many pests here in the way of insects or disease. But our challenge this time of year -- or any time of the year -- is we never know what the weather is going to bring. We had a freeze late in June and we also tend to see freezes in late August and early September. It can freeze three nights in a row and then get up to 95 degrees the next day," Lakey said.

Lakey and Pottinger have been participating in DTN's View From the Cab project since May. The volunteers report on crop conditions and talk about various rural issues and topics.

Rollercoaster weather conditions have been the common denominator for the two farmers, despite the 1,600 miles that separate their farming operations.

This week the two farmers also talk about another uncertainty -- the outlook for a farm bill during a charged political climate. Long hours in the combine cab offer a lot of time for thought and depressed commodity prices have been sliding into those musings. Ways to trim costs and eek out profits are top of mind these days.

However muddy the picture might seem, harvest tends to solidify the focus. On these two farms, fall work orders involve more than removing the crop. Read on to learn more about what's happening in Kentucky and Idaho this week.

DAN LAKEY: SODA SPRINGS, IDAHO

While the hot springs and majestic mountain views bring some tourists to southeastern Idaho, the region is mostly reserved for those who chose to embrace it. The traffic is light. The locals are friendly, and life appears to move at a reasonable pace.

Most of the time, Lakey Farms embraces the mindset, but fall is when they most feel the need to hurry. Not only are they covering nearly 8,000 acres spread over 50 miles, but there's a lot more than just harvest operations on the calendar.

"Harvest is like a double whammy. We're trying to get the crop in between rainstorms and before it snows. But we're also trying to plant winter wheat right in the middle of harvest. This is the time of year when we are trying to do everything at once -- harvest, plant winter crops, get grain clean and make deliveries," Lakey said.

Lakey has 10 loads of wheat to deliver to Utah to Shepherd's Grain next week. "Our deadline for signing up for crop insurance on winter wheat in Caribou County is Sept. 30 and we don't dare plant any of it before Sept. 1," he said. "That's a tight window and it's awfully hard to pull someone off the grain cart and set them on a tractor to plant wheat when there's grain to harvest," he said. Winter canola insurance signup ended in August, and they were able to get about 300 acres seeded.

"We still have wheat and barley that needs to ripen, so we'll switch over to drilling winter wheat this coming week. We shoot for about 3,000 acres of winter crops, but often fall short of our goal just due to time," he said.

DTN Ag Meteorologist John Baranick said forecasts are tricky in these parts. "The mountains are always a tougher task because of how they can play with the winds and precipitation. The overall lower dew points can also lead to wider swings than places like the Corn Belt.

"Daytime swings of 30 to 40 degrees are common instead of the 20- to 25-degree changes we typically see in the Midwest. And with the fall coming up and the sun getting lower in the sky, the swings can be more dramatic," Baranick added.

The upper-level pattern shows some heat starting around Sept. 1 but break by midweek with temperatures increasing again by the end of the week. "In the colder stretch, I wouldn't rule out some frost again for the higher elevations or prone areas in the deeper valleys," Baranick said.

"Transitioning from one regime to the next could bring a few showers through, but it's tough to say if they'll actually see anything or not. I would venture to guess no, but they've hit on more of those low chances this year than you would expect," Baranick said. "Unfortunately, it sounds like that has meant more hail damage this year and I wouldn't rule out another risk of hail this week with any thunderstorm either."

Lakey has his eye on a field of malting barley near Henry, Idaho, in particular. If temperatures dip to the 22- to 24-degree too long, they can cause grain to freeze in the head and result in light test weights.

"When barley starts to ripen, the heads bend over and droop down," he observed. "When the heads have been frozen, those whiskers point straight up and it will take on a funny, mint green color. That's bad news," he said.

Canola harvest is nearly complete for Lakey. He's waiting on one field to finish ripening. Another 100-acre winter canola likely won't be harvested. "It took the late June frost hard. It has stayed in a vegetative stage and is not even going reproductive.

"I've heard other farmers talk about experiencing a similar situation. It seems to have frozen at the wrong time and it is like the frost put the plant into a coma," he explained.

One advantage to being so spread out in distance and in different elevations is that conditions aren't always universal. "We have about a quarter of our acres harvested and so far, winter wheat has been better than we hoped for, given all the frost, hail and drought.

"Quality is great so far -- high protein, high test weight and good falling numbers," he said.

The falling number test has become more important during the past decade. Put simply, it measures the amount of pre-harvest sprouting that occurs while the grain is still in the field. Low-falling numbers disrupt the fermentation process in bread making and reduce bread quality. Malt houses also have falling number requirements. A falling number below 300 automatically designates it as feed wheat, Lakey noted.

Overall, the latest USDA Crop Progress Report showed Idaho farmers made good gains on harvest over the last week. On Aug. 25, the state was reported as 90% harvested on winter wheat, 51% harvested on barley and 43% harvested on spring wheat.

News of what is happening in the world and agriculture trickles in around harvesting, drilling and grain deliveries. Lakey admits to feeling frustrated by current ag policies. He sees the need for the safety net a Farm Bill provides but feels there are many programs bundled into the funding that don't directly affect agriculture.

Crop insurance helps him survive in this farming region. "There's no way that I, as a dryland farmer, could afford the insurance premium on 35-to-40-bushel (per acre) spring wheat without the financial support," Lakey said. "I'd prefer to see the whole concept revamped, but at the same time, I can't imagine the pain if the Band-Aid was ripped off. I think a lot about what that might look like and come away feeling unsure about what to think."

Over the past five years, Lakey has worked to learn how to do a better job of marketing crops. He's waded into specialty contracts that require more attention to detail, specific agronomic practices and that require delivering quality grains that exceed commodity standards. Those moves help compensate when weather strips away bushels.

"Our crop is going to be thinner this year, but those specialty contracts represent a large amount of the bushels we will have," he said, noting that all the farm's hard white, soft white and hard red winter wheat will be delivered under prices contracted before the market downturn.

QUINT POTTINGER: NEW HAVEN, KENTUCKY

This week Pottinger was celebrating a new employee joining the Affinity Farms team. James Krautscheid will work part-time when not attending college classes and Pottinger got him started by doing some pre-harvest checks.

"We normally don't start harvest until after Labor Day, but I think we could go out and shell 20% corn today," Pottinger said Aug. 29.

While every year is variable, this year may define the word. "We had a lot of heat and dryness in June. Then we got rain in July, and everything greened back up and we decided we were saved. Now, it's hot again and the corn plant seems to be saying it doesn't have anything left to give," he said.

Baranick can confirm that multiple days in the 90s F with dewpoints in the 70s likely put the crop at a huge disadvantage since the rain has been scarce lately. A front was expected to bring showers and reduce temperatures over the Labor Day weekend.

"The temperatures may be down this week (beginning Sept. 1), a lot of highs in the upper 70s or lower 80s, but the chances for precipitation are low. Models try to get showers there on Wednesday, but my guess is they stay south in Tennessee. I think there's a slightly better chance for rain Thursday night or Friday with another front coming by, but it's not a great chance," Baranick said.

The latest USDA-NASS report put Kentucky corn as 1% harvested; 25% mature and 66% at dent. Only 3% of the bean crop was shown to be dropping leaves. Overall, the Kentucky corn crop was pegged 67% good to excellent and soybeans were 60% good to excellent.

Late-maturing corn dries more slowly than early maturing corn as heat accumulation is slower past mid-September. Pottinger has some corn that was planted three to four weeks behind his early crop that is still green as a gourd. "It hasn't even dented yet," he said.

"That corn hit V6 and V7 during the hot/dry of June and didn't start growing until the rains came in July. I think it is just delayed. It doesn't seem to be hurt much from drought and we've had consistent rains up until this week. It looks incredible, even with some of the late-season disease we've had coming in. But it might be mid-October before it is ready to go," he said.

"Full-season beans need one more rain to fill out," he noted. "Double-crop beans (after wheat) are showing heat stress. We started to see some pods abort on those beans this week."

He calls this time on the farm "maintenance season."

"We're doing general maintenance on all the trucks. We're prepping for fall. We're working on putting planting equipment in order before it goes into winter storage," he said.

"This has been probably one of the most productive maintenance seasons we've had in a long time and I think it is because we've not rushed, but been thorough.

"We set a target date to start harvest the second week of September. We could shell today, but we are staying the course. We're working hard -- finding stuff like lights that need repaired and some knick-knack harnessing issues," he said.

Meanwhile, thoughts about food policy are almost always simmering for Pottinger. "A lot of what's happening in ag-tech, innovation and development is building efficiencies onto this model that we've had since the late 70s.

"I do think that these innovations that we're coming out with now will eventually help us transition into what food production ag will look like in the future," he said. "But it seems like ag is at an inflection point.

"We're trying to create policies and efficiencies and support for a system that may not be around four or five years from now when the next bill is passed," he said of current Farm Bill discussions.

When it comes to concerns about the industry, he points to China's continued assertions that it is actively pursuing the goal of achieving self-sufficiency in agriculture.

"We must figure out how to deal with those kinds of threats to usage. I'm hoping this Farm Bill includes some price supports to help us manage if China reduces imports -- programs that encourage more of our own domestic consumption, for example," he said.

Pottinger noted that crops such as the rye he grows has no financial or government safety net. "That's just us trying to figure out how to make money based on local demand. It's putting money at risk not to protect a market, but to protect the farm," he added.

"Local basis here this morning was $3.09 for corn," Pottinger said. "Breakeven price on my farm is $3.89. When I started the year in March, it was $4.90. That shows how much we have cut and stripped out of the system," Pottinger said.

Those efficiencies came from dropping fertilizer to replacement levels after being in a building program for the past two years. When the planting season was delayed, acres were switched to soybeans, which helped reduce expenses.

"We paid off some equipment and didn't replace it, which eliminated some debt service. How much drying gas we use this fall will also make a difference. Right now, we figure we'll be drying at least one-third of our crop," he said.

Pamela Smith can be reached at pamela.smith@dtn.com

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