As harvest wraps up in the United States, farmers are already beginning to plan next year’s crop. After a year in which corn prices fell significantly due to an anticipated bumper crop, growers throughout the United States are considering many factors when making their planting decisions for 2015. The U.S. Grains Council spoke with farmers from Missouri, Iowa and Texas and asked them, “How do you choose what to plant?”

Dick Gallagher, Iowa corn and soybean farmer
Q: How do you decide how much of each crop to plant each year?

A: For the last 41 years, I have been farming on a 50 percent corn and 50 percent soybean rotation. That’s just the way it’s been. The 50/50 rotation has worked well for us over the years, so we plan on doing that.

Q: What factors are the most important to you when making planting decisions?

A: The biggest factors for us are input costs, because corn has higher costs than soybeans. If we have another bumper crop, I expect input costs would decrease in 2016. We hope that input costs will come down, but for this year, I didn’t see any significant drop.

Q: Do you expect to see changes in planting decisions in your area for next year versus the past year?

A: It’s early in the year to decide this, but I think there could be a little bit of a switch from corn to soybeans in my area. But, there are a couple of people I have talked to who think things will stay the same. I think it’s somewhere from staying the same to an ever-so-slight movement toward a few more soybeans.

Charles Ring, Texas corn and sorghum farmer
Q: What helps you decide how much of each crop to plant each year?

A: It depends on the rotation, and it depends on moisture in South Texas. In 2012, we only planted corn on irrigated acres because it was a drought. Last year, we were in a rainier period, so we upped our corn and brought in dry-land corn.

Q: When do you expect to make your planting decisions?

A: In southern Texas, we start planting corn in the first or second week of February. We have to make the decision in December. The producers in the Midwest, where it is colder, make those decisions in late March. We plant sorghum in early March, so that decision comes a bit later than December.

Kevin Hurst, incoming president, Missouri Corn Growers Association
Q: How do your members decide how much of each crop to plant each year?

A: Most people are on a rotation, so they will continue with that rotation. Price does come into it, but that doesn’t determine what will happen. The market needs corn, so sometime during the year the crop will pay you enough to make it worth planting.

Q: What are the biggest factors in making planting decisions for your members?

A: We just got the price of our nitrogen fertilizer and it’s gone up a bit, which surprised me. But generally I would say that everything’s going to continue along the same path. There’s nothing that’s going to be very unusual for us.

Q: How will this year’s prices for your crops affect your planting decisions for next year?

A: It won’t for us, and I would guess the same for the majority of people. The spread between price and cost is not that much different. At some point during the year, the market will decide what we need to plant and we’ll be able to make a profit or break even