WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Ill. - Farmer Jim Anderson knows mother nature can be cruel.
"It just kept getting drier and drier and we just missed the rain," he said.
The weather has been pretty brutal this year as he combines his stunted thousand-acre corn crop.
"We just kept thinking if we can get the next rain, if we can get the next rain and finally it just gradually came on. We finally said, it's going to be a bad one," Anderson said.
Like many other farmers, Anderson expects a check from his insurance company. He won't know until later this year how much he'll get, but he knows it will be much less than what he could have gotten if these stalks were green.
"It would have been good to pick 150 to 160 bushel of corn off this field and sell it for seven or eight dollars rather than insure it," he said.
Anderson is getting about eight bushel an acre - far less than what he had hoped, but he's grateful for what he can salvage because this is how he makes a living.
"When it all comes in, there's going to be some of us that they may zero it out. There may not be enough corn to drive over the field," Anderson said.
Despite this down year, Anderson will be around in 2013 to try againand he said hopefully farmers won't be making headlines again for all the wrong reasons.
"We're just wanting to get this behind us and look forward to next year."
.jpg)
Most Popular