September was tougher on my soyabeans than August as hot, dry winds caused some pods to abort.

An inch of rain on 18 August helped, but significant damage has been done. Meanwhile, the corn is mature and ready to harvest.

I have some beans forward contracted at $9.38, but not nearly enough. Corn is priced locally at around $3.40 per bushel, beans about $8.25.

See also: Read more from our arable Farmer Focus writers

For most of the time I have farmed, $8.25 would have been an excellent price, but after selling beans at harvest a few years ago for $15.50, $8.25 looks awful.

A few days after writing my last article, I received an email from a landlord informing me they were going to sell a hay meadow I rent and gave me first option to buy it.

They worked hard to offer me good terms, so somewhat reluctantly I have decided to buy 15 more hectares, putting my total purchases of ‘high-priced’ land at 80ha, plus half interest in 16ha more.

The 88ha cost $12,000 more than the 291ha I owned before the price boom. When I told my wife I hoped this didn’t break me, she said, “I hope it doesn’t either” – a far cry from the desired answer of “honey, I know you always make the right decision”.

I am hoping that even though I am buying on a high market, the fact I am not buying at the top price will shield me somewhat from a forecasted weaker land market.  

Several years ago I began grid-sampling all my arable land and adopted variable rate fertiliser. I am taking another step this fall upgrading my yield monitor to map my fields.

At a field day put on by my seed company a speaker told us if we weren’t mapping we would be out of the game in 10 years.

Usually comments like that make me mad, but I thought about it and believe he may well be right.

After a couple of years of gathering yield information, the next step will be variable seeding rates and this will be the most costly step.

I hope I have the money and the optimism to tackle it a few years from now.

Brian Hind farms 1,250ha of prairie land, of which 770ha is family owned and the rest rented. Of this, 330ha is arable cropping with maize, soya, grain sorghum, alfalfa plus a mix of rye, triticale and turnips for grazing by 200 beef cattle. Grassland is used to produce hay