Off The Radar Scope: America -- Foodbasket To The World -- May 4, 2015

The Billings Gazette is reporting:

The past seven years of high grain prices have been transformative for Montana agriculture. The annual value of Montana’s wheat crop in 2008 crossed $1 billion for just the second time in state history and has only dipped below that high mark once since then, according USDA statistics.

Strong wheat prices were a major contributor to higher sales value, but so was an increase in wheat acres planted. The number of million-bushel grain elevators in Montana has multiplied since 2007 with foreign companies, mostly with Asian-Pacific ties, accounting for much of the construction.

As elevators began to pop up in farm communities like Chester and Kintyre along the Montana Hi-Line, towns’ cooperatives buzzed with speculation about where the wheat would come from to satisfy these new facilities, particularly in Chester, which suddenly had two.

Farmer Gordon Stoner, of Outlook, looked at the high concentration of CRP acres in the counties neighboring the new elevators and concluded that’s where the grain would come from.

“It was very much the impression that the merchants were betting on the come of CRP,” Stoner said. “Quite honestly, they bet correctly.”

Count Stoner among the farmers who took acres out of CRP when grain prices were hot. Now with prices on decline, he’s not sure whether he’s ready to re-enroll, but he’s sure farmers will be thinking about it. Winter wheat prices are in the $4-a-bushel range after being valued twice that just a couple years ago. At $4 or $5 a bushel, some farmers won’t turn a profit, he said. For those who can make a buck, CRP may be attractive again.

But wheat isn’t the only crop Montana farmers plant anymore, as it once was, said Charlie Bumgarner, who farms in Central Montana. Farming practices have improved to the point that it’s possible to manage erosion and still farm, which is what Bumgarner plans to do. 

Much, much more at the link, but from a different perspective.

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