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A sample of corn from a delivery to the Perdue Farms Tappahannock granary. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star) ------ 2 col, color
A driver leaves Perdue Farms' Tappahannock granary after unloading a trailer full of corn. Area farmers say this year's harvest is average.
Travis Burrell, 18, operates a probe that collects samples of corn for testing from deliveries to the Perdue granary. About 150 trucks a day visit the Tappahannock facility.
Angie Dunaway, an inspector at the Perdue granary in Tappahannock, looks over a sample of corn for damage, insects and other problems. |
BY FRANK DELANO
Farmers with questions about corn stood at the door of Michael I. Newsome's office.
Newsome's telephone and cell phone rang. His two-way radio squawked. Truck after truck loaded with corn rolled past his office window.
"I'm doing 40 things at one time," said Newsome, manager of a Perdue Farms granary in Tappahannock.
About 150 trucks a day from farms as far as 40 miles away will dump about 5 million bushels of corn into Newsome's tanks this season, he said.
All of it will be barged down the Rappahannock River and then either across the Chesapeake Bay to Perdue's poultry farms or down the bay to Norfolk for export, he said.
The streams of corn now flowing into area granaries will become part of a river of corn estimated at 37 million bushels flowing this year from Virginia.
In all, says the National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. farmers will produce an ocean of 12 billion bushels of corn on 87 million acres, an area three times as big as Virginia.
"It's nothing special. It's an average crop," said Newsome.
The NASS estimates Virginia corn growers will average 104 bushels per acre this year, compared with 85 bushels in last year's drought.
"Early corn looks really good," said Jack Inskeep, who raises several hundred acres of corn at the southern end of Culpeper County. "I'd say our crop is average or better."
"This is a good crop," said Brad Rosenberger, who farms in northern Culpeper. "If we don't get any flooding rains or high wind, we should do OK."
"We're going to make some money, but we're not going to make a killing," said Johnny Jones, whose family grows 476 acres of corn in Westmoreland County. The family also runs a granary near Montross.
"But all that shines isn't gold," he said. "Even though the price of corn is better than $5 a bushel, some farmers are still cutting corn to sell at $3-per-bushel contracts from last year."
Corn was selling Wednesday in Tappahannock for $5.17 a bushel. Midwest floods and the demand for corn for ethanol fuel pushed corn prices above $8 in June.
The recent decline, experts say, has been caused by decreasing demand for fuel, lower oil costs, a stronger U.S. dollar, Wall Street chaos and a host of other factors.
Higher corn prices have driven up the price of beef, pork and chicken, as well as of many other foods with ingredients derived from corn.
In addition to weather and insects, farmers are now battling huge increases in their costs to grow corn. Nitrogen fertilizer, which is largely produced from natural gas, costs five times what it cost a few years ago. Diesel fuel and chemicals also are at historic highs.
Jones said it cost him $268 in fertilizer and chemicals to plant an acre of corn, "not counting seed, fuel, land rent, equipment costs and something for me."
"Next year, it'll cost even more," he said.
In Culpeper, Inskeep said, "There is talk that seed corn will be $400 a bag next year."
Rosenberger, who sells seed corn on the side, doesn't think it will go that high, but concedes that it could possibly rise to $300, about $100 more than this season's record cost.
"If corn gets below $4 a bushel, farmers are really going to be hurting next year," he said.
Stung by the high cost of corn production and last year's drought, many Northern Neck farmers bet this year on wheat and soybeans, which cost less to produce than corn.
The wheat crop was the best in years. Inskeep and Rosenberger agree that this year's soybean harvest in Culpeper will be well above average.
With wheat above $6 and soybeans above $10 a bushel, "the man who cut back corn this year made a good decision," said Perdue's Newsome.
Little, if any, of the region's corn crop ends up as ethanol in gas tanks. Newsome said Perdue grinds up 9 million bushels a week for chicken feed.
Permits have been issued for Virginia's first ethanol distillery. But the new plant in Hopewell will have little effect on corn farmers.
When it opens in 2010, the plant will make 60 million gallons a year of ethanol from barley.
--Staff Writer Donnie Johnston contributed to this report.
Frank Delano: 804/333-3834
Email: fpdelano@gmail.com
| Local Farm Report
U.S. farmers will produce about |
| CAROLINE
The Caroline County Board Extension Agent Mac Saphir said bands of rain coming through the region fell on either side of Caroline, leaving most farms without enough water. He estimates a 40 percent loss in soybeans, a Saphir said that even if the aid request is approved, it won't be enough to cover the losses because commodity prices have either "double or tripled" in the past year. CULPEPERTwo of Culpeper County's largest corn producers don't expect record yields, but they agree that this will be a good harvest. Jack Inskeep and Brad Rosenberger described this year's crop as average or slightly better. But Rosenberger said farmers in southern Fauquier County are not faring as well. They planted late because of spring rains and then were hit with dry weather in late July and August, he said. KING GEORGEExtension Agent Regina Prunty said King George County's corn yields could be down as much as 15 percent to 20 percent. Hay yields are down as well. She said soybeans have been the most affected by the weather, but she was not sure how badly. Prunty said crops have to suffer at least a 35 percent loss before a county requests disaster relief, but she wouldn't rule out the possibility of such a request. ORANGEIt has been an average year "The early corn was fairly good," he said, "but the late corn was poor. The late corn wasn't far enough along to Corn isn't a big farm commodity in Orange. Greenhouses and nurseries are the leaders in gross receipts, followed by beef cattle and wineries. SPOTSYLVANIAExtension Agent John Howe said rain distribution in Spotsylvania County was not uniform and was lacking at key times in the growing process, and that hurt the county's two chief crops: corn and soybeans. "I think we are going to have corn yields of 70 [percent] Farmers were also hurt by the rising cost of fertilizer. "In the end, I think they may handle more money, but have relatively the same exact profits," Howe said. "Some may experience a loss relative to what it cost to produce." STAFFORDHowe said the lengthy dry spell in July and August hurt Stafford County's corn and soybean harvests. Stafford's harvests are usually modest compared with neighboring counties', but will still take a hit from the drought. Howe expects a 35 percent to 40 percent drop in corn yields, along with a 40 percent to |
