No. 5 Pest Picture Intensifies in 2015
By Emily Unglesbee
DTN Staff Reporter
Let's face it, American farmers grow some mighty desirable crops.
Each season, growers compete with thousands of species of insects, fungi, nematodes and weeds. This year, the odds tipped in the pests' favor.
The 2015 season served up two new corn diseases, a newly identified soybean disease, and one aggressive new caterpillar pest. In the meantime, weeds continued to outpace available technology. Two long-awaited herbicide-tolerant crops remained in regulatory limbo as weed resistance to products on the market continued to expand.
Glyphosate resistance remains a top concern for producers across the country. Dense resistant waterhemp populations sent some Midwestern growers back to weeding by hand in 2015, and marestail had a...
No. 6 Farmland: The Bust That Wasn't
By Marcia Zarley Taylor
DTN Executive Editor
This was the year Grain Belt farmland values were supposed to implode. Instead, sales of good quality land continued to defy gravity, with many land markets trending sideways and some areas with bumper yields actually booking year-over-year gains.
Corn revenues have plunged 40% between 2012 and 2015, USDA estimates, removing much of the spark for farmland's boom this past decade. By mid-year -- when cash corn collapsed to the $3-range -- realtors like Steve Bruere, CEO of Peoples Company based in Clive, Iowa, had expected the state's land values to ultimately bottom 30%-40% below their 2013 peak.
Instead, "good" quality Iowa farmland actually nudged up about 4.8% through November 2015...