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How Much Would a Corn Acre in 2015 Make

The ag economists at ILLINOIS have done an interesting exercise to see how much an acre of corn might gross in 2015. Or maybe it might be better explained as what would happen in 2015 if this year was like 1979.



Or what if it were like 2012, or 1983, or 1995, or just pick a year. The idea is to give farmers some hard data on how variable gross revenue from a corn acre is over time by moving that time into 2015. So that’s what U of I ag economists Gary Schnitkey did.

He wanted to look and see what gross revenues would be like for 2015 considering crop revenue, crop insurance, government payments, and price risk. The goal was to know under what conditions would a corn acre produce higher gross revenues this year?



The question then is, “In 2015 what would revenue be like this year if a year like 1972 happened?”.
"When we looked at it, 50% of the revenues were above and 50% of the revenues were below $825 per acre."
Schnitkey put those all into a table on the Farm Doc Daily website from 1972 to 2014. It shows how much of gross revenue would come from price x yield, crop insurance, and government payments.


At $825 most $300 an acre cash rented farms in central Illinois would lose money. Over the span of the years this would happen about 75% of the time and a big yield does not solve the problem - it takes higher prices from some other force. You may read the “Gross Revenues in 2015” article on the Farm Doc Daily website.