Dakota Farmer

Choosing your 2019 crop can be as complex as putting together a 1,000-piece Jigsaw puzzle.

Lon Tonneson, Editor, Dakota Farmer

December 31, 2018

3 Min Read
field as puzzle pieces
PROFIT PUZZLE: Many pieces need to be put together to get a clear picture of crop profit potential in 2019.

Several things that popped up in my inbox recently got to me thinking that it is going to be harder than ever to make an educated guess about which crops have the best chance of being profitable in 2019.

One thing was the news about the corn, soybean and wheat yield contest winners in the Dakotas of corn, soybean and wheat yield contests.

The other thing was North Dakota State University Extension Service’s 2019 crop budgets.

Winning yields
The top yield in both South Dakota and North Dakota in the National Corn Growers Yield Contest was 299 bushels per acre.

In the South Dakota Soybean Yield Contest the highest yield was 113.9 bushels per acre. North Dakota doesn’t have a yield contest.

In the National Wheat Yield Contest a western North Dakota grower won the spring wheat dryland title with 103 bushels per acre, 126% more than the county yield average. There were no South Dakota entries in this contest.

Profit projections

The numbers in NDSU Extension Service’s annual crop budgets don’t look as exciting as the contest yields.

Nowhere in North Dakota was corn projected to be profitable this year. In fact, losses of $5 to $10 per acre are projected in the west and southeast regions, and losses of $20 to $40 are projected elsewhere.

Hard red spring wheat shows a positive return of $5 to $10 per acre in most regions. The strongest return, $22 per acre, is projected in the northeast region, but losses of $5 to $10 per acre are projected in the northwest, south-central and southern Red River Valley regions.

Despite the China-U.S. trade war, soybeans pencil out to be the most profitable of the three major crops, with returns of $1 to $33 per acre in various regionals.

The profit from income-leading specialty crops, such as dry beans, is lower than past years.

Opportunity gap
Of course, you’ll be looking at your own costs and yields to decide which crop has the best chance to be profitable on your farm in 2019.

But should you also factor in a crop’s upside yield potential?

Fred Below, a University of Illinois high yield corn and soybean researcher, calls the difference between the contest yields and your average yields the “opportunity gap.”

In the Dakotas, you are probably typically looking at a 100 bushel per acre opportunity gap in corn and 30 to 50 bushels per acre in wheat and soybeans.

But how do you get extra bushels?

Is it even possible to produce more on your land?

What will you have to do differently?

And, most importantly, how much will it cost to produce more bushels?

Soil health wildcard
To make the “what to plant?” puzzle even more complex, consider the soil health question. More and more farmers who are no-tilling, cover cropping and grazing livestock cropland in the new regenerative ag production system are saying they have been able to reduce or eliminate routine use of commercial fertilizers and pesticides because soil organisms on their farms are so much more active. At the recent North Dakota Soil Health Summit, one speaker said that his breakeven for one corn field last year was $1.45 per bushel.

Jigsaw puzzle
Getting a clearer picture of what to plant in 2019 seems to be as difficult as trying to put together one of those 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles that my mother-in-law loves so much.

I’ll try to provide more information in the coming weeks that may help you figure out how the pieces fit together.

About the Author(s)

Subscribe to receive top agriculture news
Be informed daily with these free e-newsletters

You May Also Like