With the central Illinois prairie covered with snow, Trent sat down in his warm office to look back and ahead. 2018 “was a decent year, but not a record-breaker. We had good weather and good production, but the markets were not friendly.” Trent continued by observing that the federal government shutdown has stopped USDA crop reports so the markets have no current information about final yield figures, export sales, status of various inventories, and similar information which ordinarily moves the market. Without the current reports, the markets are in a holding pattern, unsure of direction.

Trent Brandenburg is very happy to look back on a crop year that was much better than expected. A long stretch of wet weather during planting time made Trent plant his soybeans before his corn because some cornfields were too wet to work. As the season progressed, a remarkable series of almost perfectly-spaced rains caused corn ear-fill and soybean pod-fill to exceed early-season predictions. Trent’s yields were very good, but not quite record-level.

Trent Brandenburg is happy with his soybean crop this year, “the yield is far surpassing what I expected, now if only we can get the prices up.” Trent harvested a about 200 acres of corn and decided it was too wet (22% moisture) so he started on his soybeans.

Trent Brandenburg is happy with his corn and soybean crops so far. The corn is fully pollinated and ear fill is underway. Trent wants more rain to get the test weight of the corn kernels up.