Nebraska farmer says crops look good, despite some challenges

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Nebraska farmer says crops look good, despite some challenges

A south-central Nebraska farmer says he expects to see some excellent corn and soybean yields this fall, despite a few challenges during the growing season.

Mark Jagels of Davenport says an early July windstorm caused some green snap in corn.  And he says the intense heat of late August probably removed some more yield potential. 

But Jagels says he’s not complaining.

“We’ve been real fortunate in our neck of the woods. We’ve had some good rains. We haven’t had a lot of irrigating here until lately, so we’ve started that,” Jagels says.

“(The heat) probably took some top end off, no doubt. Probably a little bit of test weight lost and some stalk quality as well. So we’ll definitely have to monitor fields to kind of address those issues once harvest starts.”

Jagels says it has been nice to see the markets rally but points out that corn is still well below the cost of production.

“I think that’s the big things that is on every producer’s mind—how can I sell, or should I sell, under my cost of production,” he says. “We’ve definitely appreciated the help from the federal government on the CFAP money and I’m sure we’re going to get a PLC payment this year on some of that crop as well. But, you know, we don’t want to hang our hat on that kind of help.”

Jagels spoke with Brownfield last weekend during the Nebraska State Fair, where he and his wife Suzanne are co-chairs of the Nebraska Cattlemen’s Beef Pit.

AUDIO: Mark Jagels

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