OREGON, Mo. – Farmers in northwest Missouri are plowing through the harvest season with many corn fields in Holt County already shucked.

While many parts of the state have been dealing with intermittent periods of drought, farmland in northern sections of Missouri have been spoiled with ample amounts of rainfall at all of the critical stages of the planting and growing seasons.

It started in the spring, with spaced-out spurts of moisture that gave farmers like Mark Hall an opportunity to get in the fields earlier than other parts of the state.

“The weather was good this spring and everything got planted really early,” said Hall, a farmer with hundreds of acres of land in the fertile bottomlands along the banks of the Missouri River. “We got the rain when we needed it, and it was dry working the field. So everything got put in early and we’re harvesting early.”

Despite ongoing trade wars that has seen the likes of China pulling out of the U.S. soybean market, farmers in this part of the state said they are more worried about the ongoing freefall on corn prices.

“Corn prices are pretty bad right now,” said Hall, who estimates prices are half of what they were last year. 

The price of corn is ticking upward, which is a season trend each fall.

As of Oct. 1, corn sits slightly above $4 a bushel. But that is well below the cost back in 2022– more than $6 a bushel.

Soybean futures have been hovering above the $10 mark, which is right around the prices for beans last year.