date:Oct 11, 2012
As corn harvest nears completion, farmers in the northern Corn Belt are discovering just how much a short crop year will impact on the livestock sector.
For instance, Mike Sulzer, a livestock and row-crop farmer from Monroe, Wisconsin, is doing the disappointing math from drought losses in hay and crop production in 2012. Whatever corn I harvest and hay I bale, I have to feed it. I'll have nothing left to sell, Sulzer says.
In a normal production year, the southern Wisconsin farmer puts up en