"This is ugly," says David Brown who farms several thousand acres northwest of Decatur, and has much more crop in the field than in the bin. Of course, Brown is no different from thousands of other Central Illinois farmers who are spending more time in the office and machine shed than in combine cabs. November first is here and the vast majority of the Illinois and Cornbelt crop is still in the field, held captive by mud, ponds, and grain moisture levels that have made harvest impossible.

Today's farmers are asking their dads and granddads if they can remember such problems as are being faced today. October, usually a month with 2-3 inches of rainfall, has brought nearly 9 inches (as of Thursday). Except for a dozen counties in northwestern Illinois which have received 150 to 200% of normal rainfall for October, the remainder of Illinois has received between 200% and 400% of normal October rainfall. And 2009 has already recorded a 50% increase in precipitation over average years.

For a few hours at midweek, some farmers ventured to the fields to harvest as much as possible, but combine tires were full of mud and corn stover. Moisture levels are still well above 20% and corn needs to be dried to 15% moisture for preservation purposes. That means spending unbudgeted money on propane to dry grain loaded into on-farm storage or paying the elevator for the necessary drying.

And many farm grain dryers have not been used for several years, due to normal growing seasons and a benevolent Mother Nature who took care of all of the dry down obligations. At GSI at Assumption, staff members say every grain dryer that comes off the assembly line already has a buyer and it has become difficult to keep up with the demand.

The drying costs for corn at 25% moisture, plus the lost bushels from the 1.4% shrink factor imposed by elevators will cost farmers about $100 per acre says Extension farm management specialist Gary Schnitkey at the University of Illinois. He normally recommends budgeting $35 per acre for drying costs, and the high cost this year caught him by surprise, and he's not sure how many farmers really realize the additional cost for producing the 2009 crop.

Those drying costs will eat further into profitability, and Schnitkey had already predicted a loss on growing corn this year because of high nitrogen costs and cash rents pushed up by high commodity prices the past two years. While Schnitkey's estimates of negative returns on 2009 corn production were made prior to the recent market price increases, he says those price increases will essentially be consumed by the drying and shrink expense.

Corn has to be dried to prevent mold growth, but it is apparently too late for Johnson Grain at Auburn, which used its website this week to lament its challenges. President Jay Johnson reported, "We have 3 million bushels of very high damage currently stacked up at our facility. We are hopeful that we can sell some of this damage so we can keep our doors open for the remainder of harvest and not fill our facility completely with high damage corn." And he added, "Since harvest began we have loaded five trains and have met grade specifications on only one of them. We met grade on the most recent train, but had to off- load 37 cars and reload some cars three times." As you can imagine, that is not the type of news you want to publicly reveal. It is "ugly."