Dry weather plus a gapped market
The southeast has seen above normal temperatures and Turek said the northeast was behind for a good portion of the spring. Growers hoped that by the time the Fourth of July hit there would be enough small deal yields from smaller northern growers to make an impact on the more northern markets but that didn’t occur this year. “That really didn’t play out this year and on top of that yields were hurt in Georgia,” he said. “Three weeks ago the bean market went crazy high and that’s usually an indication of where our sweet corn is headed. On the east coast you can see when (growers are) struggling with planting or there’s been a weather event that hurts yield it’s a shorter season crop and it (affects corn). When the bean market comes off you better be watching for the corn market to come off.”
Pricing in a gapped market can be tough for growers, especially when retailers want prices so far in advance. “You hate not to give out some sort of pricing so you can retain some business but you get circumstances like these where you’re gapped out on growing areas and it makes it very difficult,” said Turek. “It’s a long corn season for us – usually August and September are big months. It’s nice for the farmer to catch some big dollar markets but there’s a day of reckoning when you get retails up really high. It kind of has a snowball effect when they get corn at the retail level price above a certain point. There’s a price point where a lot of people just aren’t going to pick it up.”
Low yields won’t be promotable
As far as the rest of the season goes, growers like Turek are getting concerned about the lack of rain as the northeast remains terribly dry. “We’re getting concerned about moisture on our New York crop and every day we go without some more rain we’re sacrificing some yields. We have a lot of acres in the ground and if we can catch some rain we’d have some really good, promotable acres for August. I don’t think there are enough acres in July for anybody to be promoting corn.”
Even without promotion corn is a popular summer commodity in multiple varieties. Turek’s farm has some varieties in test production. “Some of the varieties these days are just fantastic,” commented Turek. “Every time they come up with one you think it can’t possibly be better than the one before but the eating quality is awesome on these new varieties and it helps on overall consumption.”
For more information:
Jason Turek
Turek Farms
Ph: 315-364-8735
Jason@TurekFarms.com
www.turekfarms.com