Angry Farmers, Wild Weather and Trade: A Crazy Year for Corn

Dec 26, 2019 at 07:50 AM CST
(Bloomberg) -- There was nothing typical about this year’s grain season in the U.S. Midwest, with one exception: The size of the corn crop. Wild weather delayed plantings by the most on record, a strong dollar hurt exports, the trade war with China hit demand for the corn-ethanol industry and early snow meant some growers couldn’t even finish harvesting. Despite it all, the crop proved resilient. “We ended up getting more planted than we thought,” said Heath Barnes, chief executive officer of Mercer Landmark, a farm cooperative in west-central Ohio. “We planted into terrible field conditions, and we thought yields would probably not be that great. It ended up being not bad.”

Dec 26, 2019 at 07:50 AM CST

(Bloomberg) -- There was nothing typical about this year’s grain season in the U.S. Midwest, with one exception: The size of the corn crop. Wild weather delayed plantings by the most on record, a strong dollar hurt exports, the trade war with China hit demand for the corn-ethanol industry and early snow meant some growers couldn’t even finish harvesting. Despite it all, the crop proved resilient. “We ended up getting more planted than we thought,” said Heath Barnes, chief executive officer of Mercer Landmark, a farm cooperative in west-central Ohio. “We planted into terrible field conditions, and we thought yields would probably not be that great. It ended up being not bad.”