Just about everywhere you go in Iowa these days, you see local grain elevators overflowing from a bumper crop of corn and soybeans. That’s especially true in Western Iowa’s Cass County, where an elevator near Atlantic was forced to dump large piles of corn onto the ground. Adam Stamp is the Assistant Manager of the F-S-C/A-D-M elevator, a few miles north of Atlantic. Stamp says the workers at the elevator have given names to the giant heaps of grain. He says the pile off to the West of the elevator was called the “Rocky Mountains,” while two other such piles were named the “Grand Tetons,” and the “Appalachians.” Stamp laughs that locals are so used to seeing the mountains of corn, they’re “just part of the landscape.” The glut of corn means the price farmers get for their crop hasn’t changed much lately. Stamp says the corn has been range-bound for the last month or so, at around a dollar-50 to a dollar-60 cents per bushel. Stamp says he anticipates that trend will continue until it gets closer to spring, and the elevators get the corn on the ground picked up. Stamp says they began moving some of surplus of corn by rail this weekend but it’ll be weeks before it’s all picked up. Adding to the problem, Stamp says not all the crop is in yet from the fields.Most of the harvest is over with but a few local farmers are still finishing up. Taking in the bumper crop has meant long, hard hours for the elevator’s staff.It’s part of the “ball game” every year as Stamp says they count on putting in 90- and 100-hour weeks this time of the year. Every harvest they put in 90-to 100-hours per week…it’s just been a few more of those types of weeks this year. While passersby may be awed by the mountains of corn, Stamp says it’s just a part of life in rural America.
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