Corn and soybean prices have been defying conventional harvest time trends by going up despite projections for a record crop. The manager of Iowa City’s Gringer Elevator says the crops are bucking the trend because they’re still in the fields. Terry Trenkamp says soybeans will stay in the fields until things dry out a little.
Trenkamp says everyone has stopped harvesting soybeans because you can’t harvest them when it’s too wet, and some have switched over to corn, because you can still harvest it when it is a little wetter. Trenkamp says farmers will have to wait to bring the beans in if it stays wet. He says the worst thing would be wet, damp weather and then snow, as it is hard to combine beans with snow on the ground.
Both corn and bean prices were up Monday on the Chicago Board of Trade.