How many of you guys only grow one crop?

I have been about a 60-70% corn with beans taking up the remainder. Bean prices have been good, which has been making beans pencil out at my yields. Have really been thinking of going full corn. I can just get more profit per acre from corn, and yeilds are consistant. Beans I have a hard time topping 33 bu avg. If I could get 50-65 bu beans I would gladly plant more beans. Best I ever did on one feild was 67bu, 1.4"s 140,000, kinze meters, on 15" rows back planted with 30"7000 planter. adequate moisture and field had 4 tons litter on the prior years corn, but that was just the one feild, rest did less than 45

I only grow one crop at a time. All corn one year. All soybeans the next. I've never planted soybeans at that low a rate. 150k this past year and that was the lowest ever which might have been good seeing as how dry it was. Mine came in at 45 bu per acre but in 2010 they yielded 55 bu per acre and that was the best I've ever had overall. Planted those at 175k. I have some fields that yield 70+ bushels. Corn? I'm still hoping to see 200 bpa overall. That's what I fertilize for but August usually gets pretty dry here and I don't irrigate. I usually plant 1.7-1.9 soybeans. In spite of what people are saying/preaching about "global warming" I still plant 95 day corn which is exactly what we planted 60 years ago in order to get a decent crop. The guys who planted 110 day corn this year still have it out in the fields.

Dave there are several things you need to consider here.

I also do not get the bean yields I would like but there are other benifits to beans. For every bushel of beans you get you save on one unit of Nitrogen that the corn can use. So without beans your fertilizer cost on corn will go up. There is no drying costs on beans and in certain years that could be a hugh thing if corn is coming in at 30% moisture. Beans also spread out your harvest as well.

If you want to cut back on beans you should consider a corn, corn, bean rotation.2 years of corn then beans will boost your bean yields a little.

And lastly there is always the chance that bean income per acre will exceed corn yields in the right year.

I have a corn, bean rotation on all of my acres.

Gary

I'm a thousand or so miles due south of you and plant 96 day corn for the exact opposite reason, never thought about having to make a crop before it got too cold.

I planted wheat and then soybeans behind them.

Also, rotating crops lessens the opportunity for disease and insects that thrive on one crop from carrying over from year to year.

I do corn and soybeans, with approx 1/3rd of my corn ground going into wheat, then double cropped soy beans each year. I also put a few acres of alfalfa into the rotation every year. Less than 10% of my ground is in alfalfa. All but a few acres of my crop land is no tilled. I do some ground in conventional tillage just to reassure myself that's a waste of time and money. Yields are higher, cost is lower, and time spent is far less in the no till acreage. The no tilled ground stood up to the drought and heat far better than tilled land this past year.

I also like the idea of not having "all my eggs in one basket" by rotating crops.

We've been known to have an occasional Labor Day frost here. Enough to kill everything.

Well your population is way low. If you are just planting 140,000 your final could very well be under 125,000. Soybean germinations are not as good as corn. Also young seedlings die more often.

If your ground is border line on anything that soybeans need to grow then you need a high population to get more beans plants and pods per acre.

I have some real good black ground that you could plant 100,000 and still get 40-50 BPA. The ground has way more natural fertility than the beans need. So plants will pod like crazy so you have high pods counts even with lower populations. In this ground I have had some five bean pods.

In my more marginal ground you have to plant more seeds because the plants can't grow tall enought to get the pod counts you need.

Before we started using Round UP ready beans I routinely planted two bushels per acre. I shot for planting rates of 200k-220k and final stands of over 180K. So even with just the public bean varieties I could still get 40-50 BPA.

The last few years there has been an income drag on beans compared to corn. That will reverse when these record high prices fall. THEY WILL fall sometime. The fools paying $485 dollars an acre cash rent will really get hit when the prices turn. Also the input cost of corn have been steady eating up the "big" profit some guys got the first year or two of these high prices.

I can remember hauling corn just three years ago in Aug. and it was selling for $3.50 cash. Then Russia announced that their black wheat crop was a failure and they would not be exporting anything. That caused a world wide shortage of feed grains. That drove the price up. These guys that think that Ethanol has driven up the price of corn to these record prices are fooling them selves. The ethanol may have added .50-.75 per bushel to the price but not the several dollars we have seen.

Here is a statement an old economics Professor told me in a class almost forty years ago.
" I have never seen a commodity that the American farmer can't produce into worthlessness." He has been proven correct too many times. When the prices get good in one commodity we farmers run out and produce that commodity until there is surplus. Then we scream to Uncle Sam to bale us out of our foolishness.

All it is going to take is good weather world wide for one year for it to happen. These high prices have made corn be grown in places where it was never was grown before. Places you would never think of being a grain producing area. One of these to me was South Africa. They started exporting corn this last year.

Well if you call hay a crop I only do one but then this area is not good for much of any thing but hay

We are 50/50 or as close as we can be depending on renting or losing ground each year. We also rotate. Corn on corn doesn't seem to do as well as rotating them in this area at least not for us anyway. There are some that are doing it successfully. I'm pretty sure the corn on corn especially no till this year was not good.

I'll plant 2-3 years of corn and one year of beans on the best black ground. I go a normal corn-bean rotation on all other. I can make more money with more corn on the best soil, so I think that comes into play too. Who knows with the prices and inputs how long it will last though.

Dave, you know I'm just one County West of you, virtually same latitude. I did corn on corn for 8 years on what little I still farm, just to satisfy an ethanol plant (now defunct) that I invested in. Major yield drag, even tho I fertilized more than my renter did, on 4 adjoining fields. Went to beans, got 60 bpa, then 42 last year- both years no fertilizer. This year, with minimal fertilizer, made 49 bpa.

Rotation to at least one other crop is still best for the long term. Especially with corn, you can save a lot of insecticide by rotating. When I farmed full-time, with dairy, barley, alfalfa, corn, beans....had very few acres c/c.

With the corn yields you've talked about, I don't understand beans maxing at 33. Beans typically do a third of corn bpa. Gotta be something else holding them back. I've got the Kinze meters, think they're set at around 150,000, certainly not over 160,000. I had 1.4 maturity beans this year, going with 1.8 next year..........combined this year on the last day of summer, Sep 21. WOW! to be done that early! Went on a trip to Colo- tilled a month later, after finally getting a bit of rain. Ground was mellow, not clumpy, by then.

That is not a good bean yield, should get twice that.

Another thing about mono-crop: Yes, now, corn makes more money, but also consider crop input costs, loan interest on those higher inputs, harvest pressure, vs spreading out the work load..........you've been in the game relatively few years.......I remember 90 and 91, Halloween storms, and harvest was finished cuz of snow......finished in January, some beans in the Spring- maybe get a third of the crop then. Each day, starting two tractors at home, and a combine in a field 3 miles away, and no help.....after milking cows. BTW- re: chicken litter- major N boost, but really not an advantage on a bean field. ok, I know you knew that! And of course, Happy New Year!!!!

(quoted from post at 10:12:37 12/31/12) Well if you call hay a crop I only do one but then this area is not good for much of any thing but hay

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What ya mean not good for anything but hay :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
I think your living in gods country..
I like it here ware im at to :? :? BUT :? :? It was 20 below the big one this sun up...beeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr

This area is ok if you do not factor in the tourist and the but head neighbors who slowly keep moving in and closing up the area around me. When I moved here in July of 1980 by road my closest neighbor was a mile away by road or about a 1/2 mile if you walked to his place and he was a good guy. Now days you have people moving in that sign restrictions and then try to force those restrictions on you but yet when we got this place in 1976 no one could say you could or you could not and still as I sit they should not be able to make me change but they try