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Preparing for tighter margins in 2015

The projection for tighter margins in 2015, has farmers looking at ways to tighten their belts.  For Southwest Indiana farmer Randy Kron, every expense for 2015 will be examined closely.  “For ’15 we’re going to go through our budget and look at every penny and squeeze out anything that we can,” he says.  “I don’t want to cheat on fertility because that will come back and haunt you at a later date.  But we are going to scrutinize inputs really, really close to make sure we’re not spending anything that we don’t need.”

Kron tells Brownfield that also means having conversations with landlords about cash rents.  “In reality – cash rents are going to have to come down some,” he says.  “Because $3 corn does not support the type of cash rents that we’ve had around here.  We’re going to have to talk to landlords and you’re going to see a lot of that as farmers figure out how they’re going to move forward.”

And he’s hopeful other inputs, like seed corn, will come down heading into 2015.