Earlier this year, the Irish Farmers Journal took part in the Pro Farmer Crop Tour and reported back on record corn yields.

At last week’s Barnett Hall Conference, we chatted to Dan Basse of AgResource Company, who said those yields have fallen, but are still massive crops.

Dan is a commodities expert, supplying data and analysis to traders and farmers all over the world. He is also a farmer and AgResource carried out its own crop tour this year in the US once again.

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“The rust hit them and corn yield is coming down. On soybeans, the yield is coming down slightly because of the dry weather.

"It turned very dry in the middle of August and that continued all the way to early October. It’s been enough to take the top end off corn and soybean yields. These are still big crops in the US, but they could have been a lot bigger.

“We believe at AgResource when we did our counts in the field, before it got dry and before disease came in, that we had 191 to 194bu/ac corn and a soybean yield as big as 57bu/ac. We are taking crops down, but there’s still a very sizeable crop there.”

'Difficult position'

Dan said farmers are in an extremely difficult position.

“The mood is horrific. The farmer is struggling for the third year in a row. The price of corn throughout much of the [US] Midwest is somewhere between $3.75 and $4.10/bu.

"His average cost of production will be up around $4.60 to $4.70/bu. He’s losing on every bushel he sells. Yes, he’s got more bushels, but it’s not a good year and it’s really starting to cut into his balance.”

Dan said it will be an anxious winter to see if US farmers can get the money to plant next year’s crop.

At present, farmers look to be continuing to plant.

“Even though we have these oversupplied markets in Europe and the United States and, to a lesser degree, southeast Asia, no one’s cutting back yet that would allow for a recovery,” Dan added.

Dan will feature on this week’s Irish Farmers Journal Tillage Podcast. You can listen back to all our podcasts here.

There will be more from the Barnett Hall Conference in this week's paper and online.