Adding soybeans back to a continuous-corn rotation can add $29-134 per acre to your total bottom line, depending upon how productive your land is, at $4 corn and $11 beans.

It will take a 4-5-bushel yield increase to justify a $20/acre input decision (such as a spraying).

On high-productivity farmland, 2014 soybeans will be more profitable than 2014 corn. This is contrary to 11 of the past 13 years, where continuous corn was more profitable.

Farms paying more than $300 per acre cash rent will have a negative return, Schnitkey says. Rent and capital purchases need to drop for most operations to cash flow. Average 2013 cash rents were $223. “But cash rents will be slow to adjust downward. And if interest rates increase, expect that to pressure rents further.

Buying farmland at prices that cash flow is about as sound an investment as the stock market in this new environment.

Adding double-crop wheat to rotations, in regions where that’s climatically possible, makes economic sense, Schnitkey says. “But in northern and central Illinois, for example, I have my doubts about whether that would work.”