So guess which crop I grow more of. Without corn subsidies, growing soybeans would be more profitable for us here in Westboro, and in many years beans are more profitable even after we receive our green government checks. But we consistently plant more than half our acres in corn to protect our corn base. Base is the number of acres planted to a subsidized crop, and is used to determine the size of government payments. If we plant more soybeans to take advantage of their greater profitability, we lose some eligibility for future corn subsidies.
Fathers pass many important lessons along to their sons.
We could offset some of these lost subsidies by reducing our costs of production. Soybeans are cheaper to plant, and their yield is less dependent on timely rains. We could save on the expensive insecticides we have to apply to the 20 percent of our land that is in continuous corn. We could also save on commercial fertilizer. Some of that nitrogen is available as nutrient for the following year's crop.