08/28/23 Numbers Of Interest

There have been numbers circulating that I have found interesting. The low in December corn thus far has been 4.73. The previous record for a crop insurance indemnity between the spring and fall price was 1.26. The spring price this year was 5.91 so to date the largest potential indemnity was 1.18 at the 4.73 low. We had a significant number of farmers lock in their indemnity on recent market weakness.   Irrigators are running overtime this year. Many farmers say that they have never pumped so much water on their crops before. Yet yield checks of irrigated acres are not finding record yields as a result. We have heard of farmers pumping nearly a years’ worth of annual rainfall trying to keep up with the drought. The highest number that we have heard was in TX at 44 inches. A TX cotton grower told me that they had pumped 32 inches of water on their crops and it cost them $10 per acre an inch. He said they will get enough yield to still produce a profit. I doubt that these high levels of water consumption are sustainable. I guess that means that the 11 inches of subsoil moisture…