We have corn. At $10/bushel, that's a pretty good chunk of money lying on the ground.

We have a similar pile near Colby.  Dad wants to know:  hog farming near you?

>hog

Not much, at least in this part of the state.  It was a big deal here a decade ago.  After a few ecological disasters in other parts of the state involving waste ponds I'm pretty sure the state tightened regulations --particularly near lowland areas-- and the hog parlors moved elsewhere.  AFAIK, though, NC is still one of the big pork producing states, you just don't see/smell it around here.

The pix is just one of the many grain bins around here.  (BTW, for those in EU reading along, the land around here is most like the Netherlands just to help you visualize. Flat. Low. Green.) We're also in an area with more than a few private (vs corporate) megafarmers. They have bins like this that handle just their products.

Anyway, that's a metric crapload of corn.  The word is that the soybean harvest is going to bring in even bigger money.

<added>
The counties just to the west of us do quite a bit of mechanized chicken production, G.  Perdue contracts, mostly.

I was reading that the GM crops have really done a lot to keep corn supply coming during the drought.

We just brought in our beans.  Crappy harvest with average at 20 bushels an acre.  (Good is like 50 bu/ an acre and awesome is 80 bu an acre)  Still, we figured it and it's around a 150K profit.

>profit

Hey, not bad for easy work! hhh.


>beans

To me, the yield looks good here, but I haven't seen any farmers to ask what they're actually getting.

Besides, the farmers have all gone quiet and you know what that means --they're going to have to use a grain truck to haul the money to the bank.

Potatoes and cabbage are usually the big-money crops around here. Corn, soybeans, wheat, and (for the last 10 years or so) cotton are the other crops. Some peanuts --used to be a lot of peanuts. Now they're coming back in a few places.

<added>
Somebody will ask. We never did tobacco here --soil isn't right for it. That made it tough back when tobacco meant big $$$ but it also meant we didn't depend on it like the rest of the state.