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Drought affects crop marketing for producers

A grain elevator manager in northeast Missouri says the ongoing drought is having an impact on how crops are marketed.

Sam Sullivan with Central Elevator in Silex says the low yielding corn in central Missouri has at least one ethanol plant in need of feedstocks.

“Normally, you never haul grain upriver or inland, it moves toward the river,” he says. “This year, there’s been a lot of corn hauled to the POET plant in Laddonia, because their normal draw area has 50% of the typical yields and our area has better corn.”

Sullivan says at one time, the ethanol plant was paying 60 cents more than grain elevators along the Mississippi River at St. Louis.

“That is just unheard of. It changed a lot of marketing strategies in the area, basically from Mexico all the way to the Mississippi River.”

Sullivan says harvest is nearing the halfway complete for local farmers and the crop varies, based on rainfall.

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor has nearly 60% of Missouri in moderate to extreme drought conditions.