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We finished up the 2018 harvest last week. The mid-harvest rains didn’t do much good for the crops or harvest speed. However, it did buy us a little time to ship corn and we do have plenty of subsoil moisture to get us started next spring. Just like you, we had our share of equipment issues and breakdowns. It wasn’t the fastest harvest on record, but like ever year we do get it finished. The addition of the new scale helped with the flow and speed at which we could get you back to the field. We received a lot of nice comments about it. How did we ever get along without having a second scale? Thanks for being patient as we learned the new scale receiving program and system. We’ll get the ground around it shaped up by next fall. We did get full of corn and beans. Corn and bean yields were once again above average. The new bin kept us receiving corn. We dried about a million bushels of corn before bean harvest started again in late October. It was late in the year when we had to ask people not to come back with wet corn. It was only for about 4 hrs. It gave us a little time to ship more corn. We received around 850k bushels of beans and just over 3 mln bushels of corn during harvest. Corn basis has been getting better over the last couple of weeks. Ethanol plants in Northern Iowa are already offering their free price later program. Bean basis has been pretty steady. Our bean carryout inventory will be over 900 mln bushels next yr. The trade issues with China still need to get worked out to help lower our surplus. No issues with the South American planting and growing season. This needs to change if we are going to see any reduction in the world carryout numbers. Tuesday December 11th, the USDA will release their newest crop production and supply/demand figures. The board of directors voted to revolve the balance of your 2008 deferred equity stock. These checks will be mailed out the week of December 17th. Thank you for your patronage!! Have a great weekend! Bob |
