Preparation already started for next year
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The last corn fields are disappearing in Douglas County. I do not know if there are any soybeans left to cut. After a lull for warm weather, the nitrogen bars are running again. We have had excellent conditions to finish the 2025 crop year and begin preparations for the next go around.
The dry weather made it difficult to establish crops and wheat fields. Part of our cover crop fields look good. A couple of others are very thin and streaky. We would like to have seen more growth of the cover crops before freezing weather stops progress. We did not plant any but a popular cover crop seed, annual rye, will grow despite cold temperatures. It seems that if it is above freezing, rye will sprout and grow.
In early November, I attended a University of Illinois Extension sponsored a conference about the Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy. This is the initiative by agriculture to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus in surface water. There were several good presentations. Agriculture has made substantial progress in reducing nutrients in surface water. Cover crops, careful and timely application of fertilizer and changes in tillage practices are keeping the nutrients we need to grow crops in place.
Much of the research I heard about is funded on the University level by farmers. We pay a dollar per ton checkoff on the fertilizer we buy. These dollars are used to fund research on fertilizer application, nutrient loss, cover crops and cropping strategies. The goal is peer reviewed research that will help us use fertilizer more efficiently and keep it in our fields.
If you watch the legal notices in the local paper, you have seen that Drainage Districts are holding their annual meetings. These must be completed by the end of November. Most of Douglas County is organized into drainage districts that oversee the drain tile and also the surface ditches that remove excess water and make this former swamp farmable. The largest district I know of is over 19,000 acres in two counties.
Drainage districts usually have three commissioners. These serve with little or no compensation. They volunteer their time to make sure the districts tiles are in good repair. When a farmer finds a tile hole in a field, the first call is usually to the drainage district commissioner to see if the hole is on a district tile and therefore the responsibility of the district. Most districts maintain large main tiles to give each landowner an outlet for the small tile they install.
In the annual meeting, there are legal requirements to satisfy since Drainage Districts are taxing bodies. The commissioners will discuss any large projects that should be undertaken. We are fortunate in this area because our ancestors had the foresight to install tile mains in much of the county. Many of the tile mains are 100 years old and beginning to break down and fail. They may also be undersized for the pattern tile farmers install now. One hundred years ago, a field might only have a few hand dug tile runs to the worst wet holes, not a complete system.
These mains can be extremely expensive to replace. The commissioners will set the tax levy for the coming year, a per acre tax to generate dollars for repairs needed. Since the commissioners are landowners in the district, these levies are carefully considered. A large project might require the district to borrow money, to be repaid as future tax dollars come into the district accounts.
One of the districts I have been a commissioner on for many years is administered out of Champaign County. We will have no new dollars to work with this year in that district. The Champaign County clerk’s office failed to get the levies that the county districts had set added to the real estate tax bills. They further failed to send the levies for the Douglas County part of our district to the Douglas County clerk. We were also left out of an attempt to correct this mistake. This will put a real strain on our efforts to maintain good drainage in the coming year.
The grain markets have at last shown some life. Soybeans are about 90 cents off their lows. This move is mostly on trade deal news. Corn prices have gone up some as harvest finishes and that glut of corn starts through the system. Prices continue to move up or down based on tariffs and other news. The grain trade operated in the dark during the government shutdown. None of the myriad of reports that come out of Washington were being issued.
The US Department of Agriculture did not issue an October crop report but did issue a catchup report November 14. The grain trade expected lower corn and soybean yields. Both were slightly lower, but a record corn crop is still predicted, based on the acres planted to corn. Prices fell hard after the report was issued. I am waiting to see what the trade will be on Monday, November 16. A follow-through of lower prices would not be good for short-term prospects.
The president made what most in agriculture consider an ill-timed reference to lowering beef prices by importing more meat from South America. That caused sharp losses in the cattle market over the last two weeks. It did not change the retail price of beef. As a former raiser of hogs, I would say to buy pork of you think beef is too high. It is very reasonably priced right now.
It is not good policy to subvert the signals of supply and demand in this way. High fed cattle prices will encourage farmers and ranchers to retain females to breed and produce calves to feed out. A cow bred on December 1, 2025, will not calve until early September 2026. That calf would not be slaughtered for meat for another year. Increasing the beef supply is a long-term project. The farmer forgoes the income from selling that female to feed her another ten months in the hope she produces a calf to feed or sell.
The aging of the farm population will also enter this. A 70-year-old rancher might not plan to keep raising cattle for another 2 or 3 years to see the added income and might not have anyone willing to come onboard to continue the operation. Because of the inflation of the past few years, we may not see what we consider cheap beef again. It will be lower in price at some point. That is how supply and demand works.
We have been cleaning and putting equipment away, fixing tile holes we found during harvest and cutting brush. We have applied most of the nitrogen we wanted for this fall, in contrast to last year when we were able to put on only a couple of fields before the weather turned wet. We have the price of that input locked in. We need to begin to process the results of this year to make firm plans for the next. Thank you for reading about Douglas County agriculture this month.
Larry W. Dallas
Douglas County Farmer