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THE COST OF FARMING<br />
Joel Lasack<br />
Greg Bopes<br />
Maquoketa<br />
Joel Lasack, with Maquoketa State<br />
Bank, and Greg Bopes, with Ohnward<br />
Bancshares, Inc., work closely with<br />
farmers and land owners. They keep an<br />
eye on land values, inflation, and other<br />
market factors that impact agriculture.<br />
EASTERN IOWA FARMER PHOTO / BROOKE TILL<br />
Do some homework. Shop around for inputs. On the<br />
flip side of that, make some marketing decisions and be<br />
prepared to make marketing decisions to maintain your<br />
bottom line.”<br />
Lock in on input prices, know your floor in terms of<br />
grain marketing, and know your cost of production. Use<br />
that information to make decisions, he said.<br />
“The industry is cyclical, but what’s different here<br />
is some uncommon factors – COVID and its effect on<br />
supply chain, and inflation. You throw in a war that’s affected<br />
both the food supply and the input supply for the<br />
production side on top of that. Any good manager could<br />
have a marketing plan developed that wouldn’t have either<br />
one of those scenarios factored into it,” Lasack said.<br />
The scenario farmers have been in the past year and<br />
a half hearkens back in some ways to the 2012-13 era<br />
when prices for corn and soybeans reached new highs,<br />
said Chad Hart, professor and crop marketing specialist<br />
with Iowa State University.<br />
In June 2013, the average price for a bushel of corn<br />
was $7.09 compared with $7.48 a bushel in June this<br />
year. The average soybean price per bushel in June 2013<br />
was $15.20, an all-time high at that point, compared with<br />
$16.20 this past June.<br />
BUILDING A FUTURE FOR ALL GENERATIONS<br />
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Pictured: Cristal Kastantin and<br />
Rebecca Benischek<br />
Wheatland Mutual Insurance<br />
109 N Main, Wheatland, Iowa | Hours: Mon - Fri 8 am - 4 pm 563-374-1567 | wmi2001@fbcom.net | wheatlandmutual.com<br />
Serving you in Cedar,<br />
Clinton, Jackson, Jones,<br />
and Scott counties<br />
eifarmer.com FALL 2022 | EASTERN IOWA FARMER 65
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