Champaign County Farm Bureau Foundation is an organization started as a dream some 35 years ago. True agricultural visionaries saw the need to offer scholarships to local students studying agriculture. They awarded 2 scholarships in 1986. To date they have given away over $940,000 and will be close to going over $1,000,000 in total this[…] Read More
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Rain Makes For a Tough Spring – Counting Our Blessings
WOW, just WOW! That pretty much sums up spring here in Central Illinois. We are finally putting to rest the spring planting season and once again we have been blessed in comparison to so many other areas of the Midwest. I do not want to give the impression that we have a record crop growing[…] Read More
And the awards go to…. 2018 top producers
January and February are busy months for me as I collect the data from all of our farms, put it all into detailed reports and make distributions to our clients and affiliates. Despite the desk time required this time of year, it is always rewarding to illustrate the return on investment for the hard work[…] Read More
Land Investment Expo #2 — US Presidents and the World Economies
The second post in a series “Takeaways from the Land Investment Expo in Des Moines Iowa January 25, 2019”. Our second speaker of the day (which I must admit initially I wasn’t too excited about) was Peter Zeihan. Mr Zeihan is a geopolitical strategist. What is a geopolitical strategist was my question? So I googled[…] Read More
Land Investment Expo #1 – Super Aircraft Carriers and US Economic Success
I attended the 12th Annual Land Investment Expo on January 25th in Des Moines Iowa. The event was sponsored by Peoples Company, a diversified real estate company based in Des Moines. The morning session started with economist Dennis Gartman author of “The Gartman Letter”. His message was varied but mostly centered on the US Government[…] Read More
Luke Bryan Farm Tour Comes to Atkins Farm in Pesotum
Luke Bryan has announced that his 10th annual Farm Tour will visit six cities this fall, including Pesotum, Illinois. The Illinois concert will be September 28th, located at Atkins Farm, 930 County Road 300 North, in Pesotum, IL at 6 PM. Tickets are $51 in advance, or $60 at the gate, and parking will cost[…] Read More
2017 Crop tour wrap up
Here are my final thoughts from this year’s tour. It was copied from the blog so no new insights since 7-3. 1. Indiana has little chance to be average. Warren and Benton Counties are typically two of the best counties in the State. We traveled both and found, replanted fields, low plant stands (in fields[…] Read More
2017 Crop Tour
Follow along as we tour Western Indiana, Illinois, Southern Minnesota and Iowa to assess the potential of this year’s crops (1650 plus miles in 3 days). This will be our 4th tour. We went the first time in 2011, then again in 2012, took 2013, 2014 and 2015 off, they resumed in 2016 and now[…] Read More
Harvest results are in
2016 was certainly an interesting crop harvest season. In central Illinois, we had a very warm somewhat wet season. We expected to harvest our largest crop ever and we feel just short of that expectation. When the final bins are emptied and all of the sheets tallied it appears that we will harvest the second[…] Read More
Harvest has begun in Central Illinois
Harvest if off and running here around Central Illinois. I traveled last week in Iowa and found that they virtually had not started anything but Seed Corn harvest. I would expect that we will get a good week in here. Some of the early yield reports are all over the board. I am hearing[…] Read More