“A penny per bushel just won’t cut it.” That was the rallying cry from corn growers across the country prior to USDA announcing the details of the second iteration of the Market Facilitation Program. Corn Board member of the National Corn Growers Association and Howard County farmer Denny Maple says corn growers feel better about MFP 2.0 than version 1.
“We’re grateful to the administration for the support that they’re giving the farmers for our imbalance in trade right now, and also with them considering corn as important that we got a little bit more piece of the pie this time than what we did the last time. It’s always good, but we still want trade; trade is key.”
A more pressing issue this growing season than trade has been the weather. A lot of late planting and replanting occurred across the state, but Maple says his crop is getting caught up.
“We’ve got corn that’s pollinating that’s been in the ground 9 weeks and I think that’s quite remarkable that the crops are able to compensate for our growing season. We’ve had some good temperatures here in the last 2 or 3 weeks that have sped the crop up.”
In this strange year, everyone is trying to figure out what kind of yield they might expect from this crop. Maple says, “I’ve been at this for a long time and I just can’t put my finger on any year that we can compare this to to try to get a handle on what kind of crop we’re going to have.”