Commodity Pressure

After getting up at the crack of dawn and putting in a long morning harvesting his hay crop, Idaho farmer Tracy Walton turns to the afternoon, where it is back to thrashing a good looking wheat crop that is headed to overseas markets. “This particular variety is Ovation. It’s a new variety. This is going up to Columbia River, Tri-Cities, it will be put on barges and head off to a foreign country.” Walton only planted 70 acres of wheat this year because of low market prices. “We have to get a little more out of our wheat. We are breaking even. We are just using it as a rotation crop.” Most of his acres, 600 to be exact, are in corn this year and will be harvested later this fall.” With new varieties of corn we can enhance our yield. We have water here and so if we can get that high yield, we can still do okay on corn.” With all commodity prices a little soft this year, farmers are more diverse in crops planted hoping to make up profits with crops in demand, while breaking even on other crops where prices continue to be low.