Welcome to my blog!

As a new farmer entering the business in an era of rapid change and uncertainty, I'm finding there's no shortage of things to write and inquire about. Hopefully this blog can also provide you some useful and interesting news and information about what's going on in agriculture, particularly here on the High Plains of Kansas where my family has farmed since 1886.

The main crops on our farm here in Lane County, Kansas, are wheat, rye and triticale in three-year rotation of wheat/rye/triticale-sorghum-fallow. Currently, we are in the middle of planting season – and also in the middle of a dismal bear market where the price of wheat looks like it's trying to swim with 50-pound weights tied to its feet.

As a result, we've seen a noticeable slack in seed wheat sales this year in our seed business, and right now we're about midway into planting season.

For a lot of producers, the current price of wheat has fallen below breakeven and discouraged them from planting wheat this fall. If there were a question in a farmer's mind to plant more or less wheat this year, they sided with less. A few have even gone so far as to stop planting wheat altogether and instead, opted out for forage crops like rye and triticale for their cattle operations.

Most, though, have decided to stick to their rotations and are planting wheat on the assumption that the market next year might not look anything like this year.

Right now we're just hoping it doesn't go any lower!

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