The older I get the more I see how time really does fly by. Spring is just around the corner, only 60 days until we go to grass again. The cows are calving full tilt, and soon the seed corn will be delivered. The "informative meetings" put on by extension and various companies are at their peak, and most farmers either have firmed up their cropping mix for 2009 or are about to do so.
What a difference a year makes. Last year all the talk was the bold new frontier of prosperity agriculture was poised to enter. Today, US farmers eye with a bit of apprehension what is bound to be a challenging year. Tuesday and Wednesday were bleak days in both the grain and livestock futures markets, the tumbling prices make it ever more probable most of us will find it very hard to operate with anything but red ink for the coming year. Stories abound of losses of $250-$300 per head on fat cattle coming out of the feedyards. These huge losses combined with ever more anemic fat cattle prices are pressuring both feeder and stocker cattle prices. Cattle producers can be thankful grain prices have slipped so far, because if corn was still at $5 or above, feeders and stockers would probably be nearly worthless.
For the grain farmer, the outlook is no better, especially for those who gave into the pressure and fear of no fertilizer this spring and paid cash in advance last summer for their 2009 fertilizer needs, some paying nearly 3 times the current price. There is absolutely nothing they can do about it now, some farmers(including one I know personally) are in the frustrating position now of knowing when they pull into the field with the planter they are going to lose money on the 2009 corn crop, the only question is how much. My attitude back when this "no fertilizer" propaganda was being pushed was that if there was no fertilizer, I guess I wouldn't be using any, there was no way I was going to borrow the money in August of '08 to buy fertilizer for '09, especially when it wasn't even assured we actually would raise a '08 crop.
The bad market news is not the only thing worrying me this morning, there is good reason to believe we have entered if not a drouth, a very dry cycle. Fronts are now coming through dry time and time again, with just a windshift and temperature change to alert you to the fact a front has passed. In February a drouth is quite pleasant,aside from fire danger there is very little downside to being warm and dry in the winter. It would be great to have this dry cycle continue until about April 1st, then gradually trend toward more liberal rains(although hopefully not like last summer) but odds are, with a wet '07 and '08 under our belts, '09 may well be a duster.