Rising prices for fuel and fertilizer aren’t about to steer Don Breithaupt from his appointed rounds.

The area farmer continues piloting his John Deere 1790 planter, sowing corn on fields scattered from Overbrook to the Kansas River.

Despite talk last year of area farmers bailing on corn and turning instead to soybeans – a crop whose lack of fertilizer costs alone can save $70 an acre – Breithaupt is sticking with his time-tested plan for rotating crops: the 1,000 acres he planted in soybeans last year are getting corn this year, and vice versa.

“It’s a lot cheaper – it’s by far cheaper – to raise soybeans,” Breithaupt said earlier this week, from behind the wheel of his planter running through an 80-acre field near Lone Star. “But I’m either going to farm or I’m not. I can’t just plant beans every year because it’s the cheapest thing to do, because, eventually, you’ll have to fertilize soybeans. And if you don’t rotate, you’ll have feed problems, insect problems.”

It appears many farmers are following Breithaupt’s lead.

With area new-crop corn futures rising this week to $2.39 per bushel, up from $1.55 for old-crop corn back during the fall harvest, farmers are finding it easier to pay for fertilizer and maintain their corn-and-beans schedules, said Matthew Vajnar, who runs grain operations for Ottawa Co-op.

“The fertilizer prices scared them away initially, but corn futures have rallied and fertilizer has backed off a little bit,” Vajnar said, noting that new-crop prices had increased about 25 cents per bushel so far this year.

Bill Wood, agriculture agent for K-State Research & Extension – Douglas County, said that he’d heard plenty in previous months about the allure of leaning more on beans this year. Soybeans don’t require nitrogen fertilizer – they produce their own – and actually feed on residual materials left behind by the previous year’s corn.

But the risks of not rotating the crops include costly diseases and other problems.

Don Breithaupt, of rural Lawrence, checks his planter Wednesday. He was planting corn on 80 acres southwest of Lawrence.

“A 50-50 rotation, long term, is going to be more economical,” Wood said.

Like many of his farming colleagues, Breithaupt considered – at least for a moment – making the move to more beans. But with 30 years of farming already under his belt, he wasn’t about to back off his long-term strategy.

“I don’t see fuel costs going down in the near term, and if fuel doesn’t go down, fertilizer isn’t going down,” he said. “We just have to tighten our belts somewhere else.”

2005 Results

Production totals and yields for row crops in 2005 in Douglas County, followed by the average yield for the previous five years, as provided by Bill Wood, agriculture agent for K-State Research & Extension – Douglas County:

¢ Soybeans: 38,700 acres harvested, yielding an average of 39 bushels per acre. Previous yield: 33.6 bushels.

¢ Corn: 28,100 acres, yielding an average of 108 bushels per acre. Previous yield: 102.4 bushels.

¢ Wheat: 4,300 acres, yielding an average of 35 bushels per acre. Previous yield: 45.4 bushels.