Page 6 - Logan County Farm Outlook - Spring 2013

2013 LOGAN COUNTY FARM OUTLOOK MAGAZINE. LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.com March 21, 2013
6
Who got hurt last year?
Ask almost anyone in the ag
industry, “Who got hurt in last
year’s drought?” and they will
likely answer, “Everybody!”
BillSahs,aproducer intheareanorthof
Lincoln but south of the Hartsburg/
Atlanta mount, said that all the
central Illinois farmers had
short yields due to the heat
and drought conditions, but
the ones who got hurt the worst
were producers who did not take
part in the federal crop insurance
program. Those producers “self-
insured” their own crops and bore
the brunt of short yields and corn
ruined by aflatoxin all by themselves.
Statistical information on what
percentage of producers were in this
uninsured categorywas unavailable, but
most, including
Troy Bauer of
Hartsburg Grain,
agreed that
they were in the
minority. “I could
count on one hand the number of my
customers who came in here with loads
who were totally without insurance,”
Bauer said.
Federal crop insurance has become
one of the staple inputs for farmers, just
another cost among all the others to
guarantee their success and cash flow.
In a very good production year, it might
seem attractive to lower the expense
of insurance to increase the profit,
but this gamble doesn’t always
work out. Sometimes it means
the difference between higher
profits and an inability to even
cover your input costs.
Bauer, an 18-year veteran
of the ag industry, says that
the second party in line who
got hurt in last year’s drought was the
local grain elevator. Elevators all run on
razor-thin margins, and low yields alone
can make for a difficult economic year
for an elevator. The 2012 corn yields
were around 50 percent of what farmers
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