Martin Family Farms

Wow... pretty good land sales.

We had two land auctions that are in the books this week in central Illinois. Both of the sales probably bringing about $1,000 per acre higher than I would have guessed.  We had one sale of 167 acres with 150 tillable sell for $5525 per acre. This farm was kind of a "rough" farm with lots of gullies and broken tile. The soils were good, but it had a lot of non-tillabe acres and low fertility. The second sale was 310 acres of prime ground with a 5 year yield average fo 203 bushels per acre. This farm brought $8300 per acre, which was one of the highest sales in our area. This next week we have a few more auctions that will give us more indications of where land values are going.

Food Checkout Week

According to the most recent statistics compiled by the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, American families and individuals spend, on average, just 9.9 percent of their disposable personal income for food. Applying the current statistic to the calendar year means the average U.S. household will have earned enough disposable income – the portion of income available for spending or saving after taxes are paid – to pay for its annual food supply this week.

Farms for Sale...

We have a lot of land auctions coming up in the area the next two weeks. We will be able to get a good feel for what the value of land is in central Illinois. There is about 1200 - 1500 acres in different auctions going to be sold. If anyone is interested in buying any land or going to the sales we would like to visit with you about farming the ground.  Feel free to contact us through our website www.martinfamilyfarms.org

Still Optimistic....

I attended one of Roach marketing's round table discussions today and found it to be very informational. After discussing several topics I am continued to remain very optimistic about the future of agriculture. As we talked about today we in the beginning of a Information revolution. In todays world there are more opportunities for people all across the world to start, promote,and build a successful business with very little or no cost. This will eventually lead to more disposable income that will allow people to better feed their families. I think we will begin to see the effects of this in the next ten years.

We also discussed how we need to get our marketing plans in place for the upcoming year. I think this year it sounds like we need to have everything we want to have sold by July 4th. We will be looking to price our grain on any rallies in the March- June time frame. History shows us that has been one of the best times to market our grain over the past 15 years. We will still have to raise a good crop this upcoming year to meet demand. Ending stocks are not extremely high and can not afford any major decline in production. The one thing to always keep in mind is the only sure way to keep your business sustained is to sell at a profit if the opportunity is there.

It does not seem like it takes long to get half way through the month of February. With all of the snow we are getting it is hard to believe that we could be planting corn in 6 weeks. A lot of farmers (including myself) are starting to get a little nervous about getting any early spring work done. Temperatures are forecast cold for the next week which means there will be very little melting take place. We have got our "plan A" in place but we are really going to make sure plans "B" & "C" are ready to go. We have pretty much given up on getting anymore chiseling done. We purchased a soil finisher to try and work over any chiseled ground and smooth out any ruts that we did not get filled in last fall. Unless we go to soybeans all of our corn ground will have to be worked.

This week we are going to attend some of John Roach's marketing meetings and round table discussions. Hopefully, there will be some positive news come from these meetings.

There has been some land sales in the area recently and there are a couple of auctions coming up in the next two weeks. If anyone is interested in any please let me know we would be more than happy to look at the farms with you and provide an estimated return.

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More Snow...

As we enter the second week of February any hopes of an early spring have pretty much disappeared. We are forecast to get several inches of snow the next few days and below freezing temperatures the rest of the week. It is good weather for broadcast fertilizer  and ammonium sulfate application and the freezing will really help a lot of the compaction issues created last fall.

This past weekend we attended the farmland investment fair for the Chicago Farmers. There was a very good turnout and once again the ability to network and meet new people provided a valuable experience. Two of the sessions that I attended focused on social media with Chuck Zimmerman from www.agwired.comand adapting wind power to your farm with Dale Aupperle from Heartland Ag Group in Decatur. Both of these sessions provided new insight into the topic areas that we will try to use to benefit our farming operation.

This upcoming week might be a little slow due to the weather, but we will be fine tuning our marketing plan and working on ways to improve our operation in 2010. If anyone is going to the Illinois Grain and Feed Association next week, I will be speaking on the producer panel on Tuesday the 16th, so stop by and say hello.

Finally February

We are almost over the winter hump as we head into February.  At least as we approach March there is some hope for better weather and maybe even some fieldwork. This past week we got our new 24 row planter in and put together. That will be a big change from running a 16 row, but will allow us to get more corn planted in a day. We are still keeping our older 16 row planter so we will be able to still run two planters. With the small amount of beans that we are planting we will be planting those in 30" rows or possibly working with one of our neighbors who has a drill. With bulk seed and two planters we should have the ability to plant 400-500 acres of corn per day. 

This upcoming Saturday is also The Chicago Farmers Farmland Investment Fair. Dad is currently the chairman of the event and has put together a wonderful program. If you are in the area and have time please stop by. For more info go to www.chicagofarmers.org