By Blake Haas

BLOOMINGTON – As the harvest season rapidly approaches, farmers are looking ahead to next year’s crop and are keeping close tabs on the cost of fertilizer and seed.

Rodney Weinzierl, Executive Director of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, says inflation worries are at the forefront of farmers’ minds.

“As they begin to see the prices for plant food, for the next year’s crop; nitrogen, that kind of nutrients that all crops all plants need. So all costs have gone up probably 25-35% for next year’s crop versus the current crop we have grown and about ready to be harvested.”

Weinzierl said even though prices are increasing, farmers are more worried about the ’22 and ’23 crops.

“With higher prices for inputs, all those input prices always come down slower than what crop prices (do). So it kind of sets us ourselves up for an economic pinch for may 12 months out because of that. And those are big prices. A farmer is easily spending $150-200 an acre for corn, and maybe half that, a little bit more than half that on soybeans.

So that’s a big part of the gross income, 10-20% of the gross income on crops. And farming is a commodity business though the margins on average are usually very tight – 3-5% by the time you get all of your cost in. And that is easily is eclipsed by the cost of even a couple inputs, let alone all of the inputs.”

As far as this year’s crop goes, Weinzierl told WJBC’s Marc Strauss he’s generally concerned but optimistic on this year’s crop size.

Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].