“As you see your yields drop, you want that bigger price to make up for that,” said Hayes, who farms in Nebraska and Iowa.
“Severe drought” now covers 6 percent of Nebraska, concentrated in the northeast and north-central parts of the state.
The only areas with no dry conditions are parts of southeast and south-central Nebraska, and the far northwest corner of the Panhandle.
Nebraska in 2012 faced the kind of drought conditions that come around only every 25 to 50 years, said Associate State Climatologist Al Dutcher.
Some of Nebraska’s corn crop is too far gone, he said, for rain to make much difference now.
Farmers generally would have planted corn in mid-May for harvest in October, and corn has narrow windows of time when the amount of rain influences the size and number of kernels.
The situation wouldn’t be so bad for farmers who are facing big declines in yields — the amount of corn they’ll produce per acre — if they could look forward to a run-up in corn prices to make up lost revenue.
But only 15 percent of the U.S. corn crop is in drought conditions, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated in a Thursday report.
“It’s just another low-income year,” Walters said.
Will he make money this year?