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Corn or Cattle? How one farm made the acreage allocation decisionCorn or Cattle? How one farm made the acreage allocation decision

Dee River Ranch’s investment in grain storage, soil health prompts a shift from pasture to cropland.

Raney Rapp, Senior Staff Writer

February 5, 2025

4 Min Read
Woman standing by well pump near irrigation reservoir.
Annie Dee showcases the pumphouse for the main irrigation reservoir at Dee River Ranch near Macon, Miss. Photo by Raney Rapp

Every field on Dee River Ranch near the Mississippi-Alabama state line in Aliceville, Ala., is covered in thriving green cover crops of varying maturities. It’s exactly expected for a farm that’s become synonymous with soil health and high yields, but for the Dee family and their neighbors, there is one stark missing element. 

The ranch’s absent cattle aren’t the result of rustlers. The culprit is a 750,000-bushel grain storage facility looming on the skyline.  

So, why give up diversity in a year where cattle prices far outpaced corn dollars? For Annie Dee it came down to opportunity, efficiency and embracing the farm’s best assets.  

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“We’ve expanded with about 2,500 more of our pasture acres to plant,” Dee said. “We were row cropping about 4,000 acres of corn and soybeans and then those new acres we will probably put all into soybeans because of the risk of planting corn without access to water. There is so much more money that goes into a good corn crop.” 

The decision to expand the grain facilities came late COVID-era and took Dee, her brother Mike Dee, and sons Seth and Jesse More, over a year to plan and piece together. In total, the new construction added over 500,000 additional bushels of storage, including two additional wet tanks, as well as adding a new tower dryer, and two load out bins which helps Dee River Ranch maximize efficiency when harvesting high moisture crops.    

Related:Maximize your on-farm grain storage capacity

 “The theory is one wet tank we will empty completely out to clean and then we can also load into the other one and that way each tank has the opportunity to get completely clean,” Dee said. “We previously only had one wet tank and sometimes residue was left on the walls of the bin – that wasn’t necessarily good.” 

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Bigger and better 

The bigger, better grain storage facility has been necessitated over time as other aspects of Dee River Ranch evolve - namely yield and harvest efficiencies.  

“Equipment has grown bigger and bigger, now we have a 16-row corn header on 8-series John Deere combines and we can harvest more grain than we can quickly haul away,” Dee said. ‘We don’t have close access to ports for direct sales and so we end up storing our grain more frequently.” 

Before the storage upgrade, the Dee farm would need to quickly clear storage between crops, without access to enough trucks or drivers to make the process flow smoothly. The Dees’ corn crop goes to a poultry feed market about an hour away, while their soybeans have to travel over four hours to the elevator.  

“To get the number of trucks we needed to haul our soybeans and corn away was not easy to do so the expanded storage has enabled us to harvest our crop and haul it away in the time frame that we wanted to,” Dee said. “That’s why we got rid of the cattle. We’re a little over-built on the storage and we needed more acres to fill it up.” 

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No looking back  

Are there regrets in becoming a ranch without cattle? Dee said she won’t be looking back. Especially on cold mornings where she can stay inside by the fire instead of feeding hay. 

High cattle prices in 2024 helped sweeten the deal, when some of the ranch’s older brahman cattle brought top dollar. 

“We sold some 18-year-old cows for over $2,000. We were not questioning the decision at all,” Dee said. “Anybody here, that was active in it, will not question it. They were so happy not to make hay this year.”  

In the end, the decision to focus on farming and leave the cattle business behind took far less time and pondering than establishing a better grain storage plan.  

“We had been talking about it maybe since March - but the cattle really had not been as profitable as the row crops,” Dee said. “We put the largest investment into grain storage and then realized we needed to be farming some more of our own acres. Once we decided to do that, we won’t look back.” 

About the Author

Raney Rapp

Senior Staff Writer, Delta Farm Press

An east Texas cow-calf operation provided the backdrop for Raney Rapp’s early love for agriculture. After writing farmers' dictated life stories and keeping up a high school column in her local newspaper, Raney continued her education in agricultural communications and animal science at Oklahoma State University.

In 2016, she began as an associate editor and later served as head editor for Farm Talk newspaper, a weekly publication serving farmers in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Raney joined the Delta Farm Press team as a staff writer in 2024 to continue her goal of giving greater voice to farmers’ stories and struggles.

“Every farm has a story to tell – but Delta farmers’ stories exceed the rest in vibrancy, character and often crop yield,” Rapp said. “I learn new things every day about the rich history and diversity of Delta dirt. The more I learn, the more I become engrained in the mission to make life better for our readers each day on their own farms – while carrying the innovative ideas home with me.”

Her husband, Dillon’s job as a farm management economist with K-State Extension keeps their family of four rooted in eastern Kansas agriculture but Raney remains a southerner at heart.

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