Southern Illinois farmer feeling optimistic

VENEDY, Ill. — Eric Brammeier looks at crops from two perspectives.

The first is as a farmer. Brammeier farms his family farm with his wife, Kim. Sons Zachary and Jacob, who are both out of college and work off the farm, help their dad at planting time.

The second lens through which Brammeier looks at the crops on his farm and throughout southern Illinois is as the owner and an agent for SC Crop Insurance, the crop insurance agency Brammeier started in 2012.

"It looks good, if I'm going to use the rating system. I wouldn't say excellent, yet," said Brammeier of the southern Illinois corn and soybean crop.

He recently attended the Illinois Wheat Association's annual wheat plot tour.

As a double-crop farmer himself, Brammeier said he is feeling hopeful about his own wheat and the wheat crop in Illinois.

The tour covered some 19 counties in southern Illinois and gathered 57 field counts. The estimated average yield for Illinois from the tour was 97.6 bushels per acre.

"Talking to some of the guys who led different groups on the tour, the wheat in general looks good to excellent and mine does, too," Brammeier said.

"I always plan for 80 bushels an acre and I'm hoping for 100, but we're three weeks or a little longer from harvest."

Brammeier grows seed wheat for AgriMAXX Wheat in Mascoutah. He markets his corn and soybeans through Top Ag Co-op and Gateway FS.

"Now the market is the river so most of my grain is headed to the Mississippi River terminals," he said.

On the crop insurance side, Brammeier isn't just waiting for his own wheat harvest. He's also waiting for other double-crop farmers.

"Because we have wheat, most of the acreage reporting doesn't occur until wheat harvest. We really get busy June 20 through the deadline of July 15 and that's because of the double-crop wheat and double-crop soybeans. A majority of our customers, 90% of our customers, have wheat planted and insured along with their corn and soybeans," he said.

"In order to save everybody some time, we wait until the double-crop beans are planted, then we take the first-crop beans, corn and double-crop bean acreage all at the same time."