BOONE, Iowa (WCIA) — With grain prices down and crop production costs fairly steady to higher, the financial pinch is being felt on the farm.

That’s why Matt Bennett of Windsor in Shelby County — one of the most popular market advisors — drew a big crowd at the Farm Progress Show in Iowa this summer.

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“It’s a very frustrating time, we know that. Markets have been down for, it seems like forever here over the last few months, Bennett said. “Right now, the producer has to ask themselves, ‘Instead of beating them up over what they’ve done wrong, what do I need to do?

“What I told them for this fall is that you know, what? If you need money this fall, which most of us do, if you haven’t sold enough yet, you got to consider ‘Is the actual cash price of corn and beans going to be better today, or Oct. 5 or 10? Probably today. So if you need the money, you might go ahead and do something about that now.”

As far as 2025 is concerned, Bennett called it “pretty slim pickings.”

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“When you stop and look at the N, P and K price, you look at your total inputs. University of Illinois custom, of course, does a lot of great work on this, but we work with a lot of growers on individuals,” Bennett said. “The guys that’s got the ground paid for, guys my dad’s age, they’re ok, but the vast majority of us that are trying to buy some land, maybe we don’t have all of our equipment paid for, a variety of things, of course, that we spend money on. You can’t find black ink paying for fertilizer now and selling this corn in ’25. So we’ve been telling people ‘Maybe be a little more hesitant in what you do for the ’25 crop.'”

Some folks may think that with revenue insurance, they may get some farm program money. But Bennett doesn’t see many opportunities for that in the present given county yields.

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“If your county yield is awfully big, and a lot of them are going to be, it might be a tough road to get that money,” Bennett said. “A lot of guys are telling me ‘I’ve got 95%,’ but as far as CRC goes, it only goes to 85%, and then you’ve got SEO, ECO and you got to know those additional. Those are county-based products and so you’re not actually protecting 95% of your yield.”

“And so, the other thing with 85%, if you’re at APH, you come in around $3.97, 85% for the $4.66 spring price,” Bennett added. “The problem with that is if your APH is 220, and you’ve got 240-bushel corn, that $3.97’s probably 30 cents lower. And so you’re not going to collect insurance just because the price of corn went down.”