DESPITE PRICE, CORN LEAVES GROWERS COLD

With the soybean to corn price ratio dropping to
2.1 to one, American farmers are getting ready to
react to what they see as a massive market signal.
U.S. corn growers will plant 80 million acres next
spring, up from 71 million acres in 1995.
North of the border, however, farmers are as cold
on corn as they've been all through the 1990s. Even
the most bullish predictions for Ontario's 1996
corn crop call for only a modest acreage hike.
Pioneer Hi-Bred president Bill Parks expects
Ontario corn growers to plant four per cent more
corn, "mainly at the expense of spring cereals. We
think soybeans will stay steady, and it's obvious
we've got more winter wheat."
Other suppliers are a little less bullish. W.G.
Thompsons is predicting Ontario's corn acreage will
stay flat at just above 1.7 million acres. "There's
a lot of desire out there to get more corn onto
ground that hasn't seen anything but soybeans for
several years now," says Wes Thompson Jr. "If
farmers think they can make a dollar at it, they'll
be planting corn."
Brian Doidge, economist for the Ontario Corn
Producers Association, thinks those forecasts are
too optimistic. More likely, Doidge says, the
Ontario crop will plunge to 1.6 million acres next
spring, a drop of over 100,000 acres.
Ontario's white wheat crop has jumped to a record
800,000 acres, Doidge says, and he expects soybeans
to ride steady at 1.8 million acres.
So, can't Ontario cash croppers read the market?
Jim Johnson, Lambton county cash cropper and
president of the Ontario Corn Producers
Association, is as disappointed with his 1995 corn
as any Ontario farmer.
Johnson's farm has a long-term 125-bushel average.
Early July, he was predicting a bumper crop, well
above average. But when the combine pulled out of
the fields early November, he had less than 100
bushels to show for a year's effort. "I've never
been so shocked by a crop," Johnson says.
The corn association is scaling back its yield
estimates for the provincial crop, down from 118
bushels at the start of harvest to 108 bushels six
weeks later.
"I keep telling people we need more corn in our
rotations, that it's environmentally beneficial,"
Johnson says. "I don't think that message is going
to get heard this winter."
Ontario puts more than four million acres a year
into the three big cash crops, but because of
equipment and rotational restrictions, farmers have
total flexibility on only between one-quarter and
one-half million acres.
For 1996, Doidge predicts that virtually all of
those flex acres will go to soybeans and wheat,
despite the attractive soybean:corn ratio. "The
hard truth is, for most growers for the last four
years, corn hasn't paid the bills."
Doidge points out soybeans are cheaper to grow.
They've escaped the big jump in fertilizer prices
that siphoned corn profits in 1995, and soybeans
are proving a better fit for low-cost no till and
minimum till strategies.
Besides, Doidge says, soybeans are proving they're
tougher competitors. Corn yields have been
lacklustre through the last four years, but with
the same weather soybeans in side-by-side fields
keep putting out bumper harvests.
And while soybeans are susceptible to nematodes and
root rots, the 1995 borer outbreak proves corn
isn't immune to pests, Doidge says.
Cargill agronomist Pat Lynch calls that kind of
thinking "a triumph of emotion over agronomics." He
agrees soybeans need less cash input, and that corn
yields in 1995 were disappointing in the wake of
good wheat and soybean yields.
Lynch also says the high cost of seed corn will
turn off a lot of would-be corn growers next
spring.
But farmers have to be realistic about their cost
estimates, Lynch says. "I see a lot of growers
figure out all their corn costs, but then they
pencil in a marginal weed control program for
soybeans.
"They don't even think about the cost of a rescue
treatment."
He tells growers to consider the soil benefits of
keeping corn in the rotation. "I know it's tough to
translate that into a dollar value," he says. "I
also know that we all really do believe at bottom
that our soils will be more productive if we can
keep corn in the rotation."
Ken McEwan, economst at Ridgetown agriculture
college, says few farmers know enough about their
production costs to know exactly when the
soybean:corn  price ratio tilts in favour of corn.
"Many farmers look at the start-up costs for corn
seed and fertilizer, and they don't get any
farther," McEwan says. "But that's just part of the
picture. We have to be concerned about where we
stand at the end of the year, not just in the
spring."
There's little help from the provincial government,
which hasn't done an intensive study of per-bushel
production costs for over five years. With funding
cutbacks, government staffers say, the prospects
for such a study are grim.
A 1994 survey of 112 fields enrolled in the E Plus
program found an average corn yield of 151.7
bushels per acre, and profit of $68.22, compared to
soybean yields for the same farmers of 46.9 bushels
per acre, and profit of $96.70.
As with previous surveys, the E Plus study found
bigger differences between farms than between
crops. The average bushel of corn cost $2.70 to
produce, for instance, but costs for individual
farmers ranged from $2.15 to $3.63.-TB 

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