Drought this year has caused many farmers to consider adjustments to their plans for the next crop year. The conditions mean farmers have a deeper concern about seed supply and even financing for next year’s supply. Seed Consultants district sales manager Bryan Smith is telling farmers at their summer meetings that supply for next year is solid.
“A lot of customers are worried that the seed supply isn’t going to be there and when they come to our meetings we definitely address that. Our growers are having an excellent year and we’re looking at having a pretty normal seed supply for us at Seed Consultants. Industry wide though I think guys need to place early orders to lock in those harder to get hybrids, especially with grade sizes. If you have to have a certain grade size we’ll help you out.”
Seed production has been challenging this year but all things considered the corn side is looking great, “with the irrigation that we have. When we planted our corn fields for seed production we planted a little bit later so we missed some of the heat during pollination period times. The soybeans, I think we’re in a fantastic situation with our soybean seed also.”
Smith says some farmers have floated the idea of switching to all soybeans next year because of current prices, but he expects once the markets settle down and presumably even out they will get back to the idea of a typical corn and soybean rotation.
What else do their customers ask about? That zero percent seed financing and seed prices.
“Seed Consultants did not raise their price on corn at all so that has been a very welcome surprise to a lot of the farmers. They expected a 5 to 10 percent jump. A lot of companies have not even set their pricing yet. We came out with our pricing in July, so again another big surprise for our guys. They’re also asking about seed financing and we do offer zero percent seed financing through two different areas.”
According to Smith more farmers are asking about financing their seed, and their plans allow growers to pay for this fall’s seed purchases up until December of 2013.[audio:https://www.hoosieragtoday.com//wp-content/uploads//2012/09/Seed-supply-at-Seed-Consultants.mp3|titles=Seed supply at Seed Consultants]