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DeKalb County

Program offers opportunities for farmers to fill worker needs

By: Martha Blum • AgriNews Publications

“According to a survey conducted in 2023, the difficulty in finding U.S. workers is an eight out of 10, with 10 being impossible,” said Teri Theodore, worker placement coordinator assistant supervisor for USA Farm Labor Inc.

“I work with about 30 farmers in Illinois and it continues to grow,” said Theodore during a presentation at the Illinois Soybean Growers’ Farm Business Summit. “We’re up to about 1,300 employers we work with because they cannot find and maintain domestic workers.”

USA Farm Labor has been in business for over 20 years. Theodore said the H-2A program is one way farmers can solve the need for qualified employees for their operations.

“Our owners are South Africans and they had a vision that they wanted to bridge the gap between South Africa and the U.S. to service both countries,” Theodore said.

“We’re a little bit different in terms of our customer service. I talk to employers and workers. We do a lot of conflict resolution for our customers, and we handle the paperwork.”

The workers enter their information in the company’s database and U.S. farmers complete an application that includes information about the type of work the employees will be doing.

“Our recruiters see what you’re looking for, what the workers have put in and then they try to marry those together,” Theodore said. “We try to match what you need with the workers’ abilities.”

The first step for the H-2A program is to submit documents and the Department of Labor will issue a labor certification.

“The second step is to apply to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to get an approval notice,” Theodore said. “The time frame to submit paperwork to the state workforce agency is at most 75 days before the start date and at least 60 days before the start date. Once you pick a date, you really want to stick with it because the program is seasonal and temporary.”

If a farmer starts moving the dates around a lot, Theodore said, the Department of Labor may start questioning if there is a yearround need.

“Once they determine it’s a year-round need, they won’t issue a labor certification,” she said. “To qualify for the H-2A program, you have to stay within the 10-month window.”

Employers must provide a recruitment report to the Department of Labor that includes information about domestic applicants. “They want to prove there are no Americans willing, able, and qualified to do these jobs,” Theodore said. “Of the seven years I’ve been doing this, there’s probably a handful of farmers that had qualified and able-bodied domestic applicants.”

The period of need for the workers must be 10 months or less and the worker’s visa is valid for the duration of the job.

“The workers can stay up to three years, but you need valid permits,” Theodore said. “So, if you have a winter need, you can apply again and keep the same guy, but once they have hit the three-year limit, they have to leave the U.S. for at least three months.”

responsible, so there is a lot of responsibility for the employer to provide for the workers—this is not a cheap or easy program.”

USA Farm Labor has a handbook about the H-2A program.

“Once you sign up for the program, we send the handbook to you and it has a wealth of information,” Theodore said. “There’s a lot of questions, so we walk you through the process and assist you in any way we can.”

The best practices for being a great employer, the placement coordinator said, are to have some guidelines set up and communicate with the workers.

“ “

The workers are supposed to have one day off per week, but the majority of the guys coming over want to work. If they ask for a Sunday or holiday off, they have to be granted that, but they can work seven days per week.

—Teri Theodore, USA Farm Labor Inc.

Benefits of using the H-2A program for U.S. farmers are they don’t have to pay Social Security or retirement for the workers. “The workers are responsible for paying federal tax, so that is the only thing you deduct from their paycheck,” Theodore said. “You do have to provide them a W-2.”

The U.S. employers must provide workers’ compensation. “When we do the paperwork, we have to spell out how many hours the guys will work at minimum and you guarantee three-quarters of that,” Theodore said. “So, if you say they’ll have 100 days of work, 75 of those days have to be guaranteed, but I’ve never had an employer worry about that three-quarter limit.”

The workweek cannot be less than 35 hours.

“The workers are supposed to have one day off per week, but the majority of the guys coming over want to work,” Theodore said. “If they ask for a Sunday or holiday off, they have to be granted that, but they can work seven days per week.”

The cost for the H-2A program from the Department of Labor is $100 plus $10 for every worker.

“The USCIS fee varies from $760 to almost $1,700 depending on whether you ask for workers outside of the country or in the country,” Theodore said.

Employers reimburse the workers for their airline ticket, which averages around $1,800 from South Africa. “For Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, the wages for the workers jumped from $18.18 to $19.57 for 2025,” Theodore said.

“To use our program, the administration fee is $695 plus $100 for new clients,” she said. “We have a variable fee to pay the recruiters, and there is a monthly fee of $40 to $85 per person.”

Housing is also a requirement for all workers. “The house has to be inspected to make sure it meets all OSHA regulations,” Theodore said.

“Once the workers get here, if something has been damaged in the house, you are held

“We try to encourage you to lead by example,” she said. “Treat them like you would want to be treated and we are there for conflict resolution.”

Teri Theodore

Teri Theodore, worker placement coordinator assistant supervisor for USA Farm Labor Inc., talked about the H-2A program.

Field history impacts levels of corn rootworm populations

By: Martha Blum • AgriNews Publications

There is a lot of field-to-field variability of corn rootworm populations in Illinois fields.

“Most of the variability is based on field history,” said Nick Seiter, assistant professor and faculty extension specialist at the University of Illinois.

“Where we are finding the highest beetle numbers are long-term continuous cornfields, and DeKalb County is a hotspot,” he said during a presentation in Sycamore at the Illinois Crop Management Conference, hosted by U of I Extension.

“Where we have injury to first-year corn generally, it is when the field is in close proximity to long-term continuous corn,” Seiter said. “The highest numbers of beetles swept from soybean fields are here in DeKalb County. That’s because you have a lot more beetles and that’s where they end up because they have to go somewhere.”

There are four Bt proteins that are available for seed companies to incorporate into corn hybrids that utilize two modes of action.

“The Bts act very fast when they are working,” Seiter said. “An insect feeds on the Bt protein and if it is susceptible to that protein, it stops eating and dies within 12 hours.”

The RNAi technology is a different and a slower mode of action. “It’s more effective at killing the individual corn rootworm than eliminating the pruning,” Seiter said. “It takes a few days to kill the rootworm, and in the meantime, they are still eating.”

Therefore, Seiter said, farmers that plant a RNAi hybrid in a field that has resistance to Bt traits will see some pruning, even if the RNAi trait does what it is supposed to do, which is kill the insects.

“It takes about five days for the RNAi mode of action to take effect,” he said.

For insecticides, the good news is they are generally doing what they have always done, the assistant professor said.

“We haven’t seen a wholesale change in insecticide efficacy,” Seiter said. “The really good insecticides we have for corn rootworm control are the same ones from 20 years ago—they haven’t changed much. We have some new players, but they are not really changing the game for rootworms. They are materials that are going after wireworms, and they have some rootworm activity.”

Insecticide data shows, Seiter said, that when there is a low population of rootworms, the pruning still reaches one-half of a node.

If you get large populations of corn leaf aphids at or just prior to tasseling, they interfere with kernel set and ear development, and then you can have pretty serious impacts on yield.

“ “

–—Nick Seiter, assistant professor and faculty extension specialist at the University of Illinois.

“It doesn’t completely eliminate the insects,” he said. “When you put an insecticide down it protects the center of the root very effectively, but not the peripheral roots, so there is some pruning out there.”

When farmers relied only on insecticides for rootworm control, the beetle populations were a lot higher.

“Insecticides are better at protecting the root from injury than they are at killing insects,” Seiter said. “That is probably the reason why we don’t see resistance because there is a natural refuge on the plant.”

There was a significant outbreak of corn leaf aphids during the 2024 growing season. “That was unique for us,” the assistant professor said. “For the last five to seven years, I got occasional calls on aphids and almost all of that was bird cherry-oat aphids at R4 to R5 corn.”

The easiest way to identify the two types of aphids is the corn leaf aphid gets inside the whorl and tassel and it’s up and down the ear zone, Seiter said. The bird cherry-oat aphid will be on the underside of the leaves.

“If you get large populations of corn leaf aphids at or just prior to tasseling, they interfere with kernel set and ear development, and then you can have pretty serious impacts on yield,” Seiter said.

In a normal year, the corn leaf aphids arrive here from the southern U.S. in August, and we typically see just a few of them. But last year the aphids were pretty impactful in a lot of areas, but hopefully, that was a oneoff kind of thing.”

A lot of aphid species go through alternating sexual and asexual cycles.

“They have an overwintering host, they produce males, mate, females lay the egg, and the egg survives the winter,” Seiter

explained. “Corn leaf aphids don’t do that— they just have an asexual summer cycle. All the corn leaf aphids we find are females, and all the offspring are asexual clones.”

With this type of life cycle, the corn leaf aphids need green tissue to survive. So, they have to overwinter in areas where they can survive, and that is mostly in the southern U.S.

For Illinois farmers, the corn leaf aphid is a migratory pest. “They get up in the atmosphere and the wind takes them wherever, and then they find a host plant,” the assistant professor said. “Their host plants are a lot of grasses, so they will feed on wheat, barley or sorghum.”

Most corn hybrids, Seiter said, are fairly tolerant to corn leaf aphids. “But I think most of the seed companies had one or two hybrids last year that were impacted by aphids,” he said. “What happened last year has happened before, but because they have been so infrequent, they get assigned to whatever the weather conditions were that year.”

According to Seiter, the reality is it’s more complicated than that, and probably the driving factor is more likely the wind pattern and weather conditions in Texas

and Oklahoma. Those areas where they are growing a lot of sorghum, producing a lot of aphids, and we happen to get the winds at the right time, and they end up here.

The bad news is these conditions are not very predictable. However, the good news is they don’t happen very often.

“Last year was the first time it happened in decades, and it probably won’t happen again next year,” Seiter said. “But it’s not any more or less likely to happen this year based on what happened last year. Or, what’s going on in Illinois because our aphids all die, it’s what happens where they come from.”

Nick Seiter is assistant professor and faculty extension specialist at the University of Illinois. Nick Seiter

Weather Outlook

Drought periods result in drier topsoil in parts of Illinois

By: Martha Blum • AgriNews Publications

The topsoil in northern Illinois is drier than normal for this time of year, said Trent Ford, a state climatologist with the Illinois State Water Survey at the University of Illinois.

“We have 19 sites around the state, including one near DeKalb, where we have measured soil moisture for the past 30 years. These records are unprecedented across the U.S., but the problem is soil moisture is highly variable, and it’s almost impossible to measure at the scales we need.”

Ford spoke during a presentation at the Illinois Soybean Growers’ Farm Business Summit. The soil moisture levels from the Illinois Climate Network are measured at 4-, 8- and 20-inch depths.

“Anything above 30% water by volume is pretty good, but it depends on your soil,” Ford said. “The point where plants are really struggling to pull water out of the ground is at 15% to 20%.”

Ford recalled it was dry in a lot of Illinois last spring. “Then it was hot, and it cooled down in July,” Ford recalled. “During July, the average temperature in the state was less than June. There are only three times that has happened previously. If we’re going to experience two periods of drought, having them in the spring and fall and then having it wetter in the summer is not a terrible pattern.”

The Condition Monitoring Observer Reports are organized by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska. Anyone can provide a report completely anonymously about what the conditions look like at their location at go.illinois.edu/cmor.

This is an awful time of the year for monitoring drought because it’s winter. The drought we’re experiencing is mainly a result of an extremely dry September and October.

— Trent Ford, Illinois State Water Survey at U of I “ “

At the DeKalb site, the 4- and 8-inch depths are below the typical amount at this time of the year based on the 30-year average. “But it’s still at 30% water content, so that’s OK,” Ford said. “At the 20-inch depth, we are pretty much right at normal.”

During the winter, Ford said, soil moisture almost never gets below 30%.

“There is nothing pulling the water out of the ground because plants are either dead or dormant, and evaporation is pretty minimum, even when the sun is out,” he said.

According to the drought monitor map, much of northern Illinois is in a moderate drought. “This is an awful time of the year for monitoring drought because it’s winter,” Ford said. “The drought we’re experiencing is mainly a result of an extremely dry September and October.”

“It is really helpful, and information goes into the database and gets rolled into recommendations about drought,” Ford said.

For looking ahead, the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center provides seasonal temperature and precipitation outlooks.

“When you go beyond the seven-day forecast, the precision declines, but we can say if it’s going to be warmer or colder than normal,” Ford said. “This forecast is very La Niña-like, with warmer in the southern U.S., colder in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Plains, and equal chances for Illinois of it being a colder or warmer winter.

“We do know our winters are getting warmer, and they are actually warming about five times the rate of our summers. Those trends are included in this forecast, and despite the warming trend, the Climate Prediction Center is still showing equal chances of an above- or below-normal winter.”

For the winter and spring precipitation outlooks, Ford said the forecast is dry across the Southern Plains and Southeast and wet through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley.

“We’re not coming into this winter with full soils and streams, so there is capacity,” he said. “When we get rain or snow and it melts, the soil takes it first and then releases it to the streams more gently.”

The National Weather Service provides Hazards Pages that indicate the likelihood of having hazardous weather. “I find these a lot more helpful on a day-to-day basis,” Ford said. The outlooks are for three to seven days and eight to 10 days.

“It could be anything from a freeze or frost to drought conditions, heavy rains or excessively cold or hot temperatures,” Ford said.

Climate Toolbox, the climatologist said, has a neat tool that provides projections for future climate conditions by using climate models.

“Here’s an example for Sycamore, Illinois, of total summer evaporation in inches compared to historical (numbers),” he said. “The projection is for increasing evaporation of 1.5 to 3 inches during the summertime from the warmer summers having more evaporation.”

Trent Ford

Trent Ford is a state climatologist with the Illinois State Water Survey at the University of Illinois.

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Long upward ag land values trend ends

By: Tom C. Doran • AgriNews Publication

After a four-year run of substantial gains, agricultural land values in the Seventh Federal Reserve District saw a 1% annual decrease.

For the first time in five and six years, Illinois and Indiana, respectively, had annual decreases in their farmland values, both falling 3% yearover-year, while Iowa declined by 2%.

In contrast, Wisconsin had a single-digit annual increase of 8% in agricultural land values for 2024. A Wisconsin banker noted there was “still very little land available for sale.”

Overall, district farmland values increased 1% from the third quarter of 2024 to the fourth quarter.

The findings, authored by David Oppedahl, Seventh District policy adviser, and Elizabeth Kepner, senior research analyst, and published in the district’s AgLetter, are based on respondents from 133 agricultural banks.

The Seventh District of Chicago includes the northern two-thirds of Illinois and Indiana, all of Iowa, the southern two-thirds of Wisconsin and Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

Adjusted for inflation by the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, district farmland values had an annual decrease of 3.4% in 2024, the first real decrease in five years and the largest real decrease since 2014.

District farmland values edged down from their 2023 peak, but were still 11% above their 2013 peak in real terms and up 43% from their 2013 peak in nominal terms.

“Strong crop yields were a boon for a majority of Seventh District farms in 2024, despite drought in much of the district

SEVENTH FEDERAL RESERVE DISTRICT

for at least part of the growing season,” Oppedahl said.

Based on calculations using U.S. Department of Agriculture data, the district states’ corn yields increased 3.7% in 2024 from 2023 and their soybean yields increased 1.1%.

Harvested corn acres were down 3.2% in 2024 from 2023, while harvested soybean acres were up 3.5%.

On net, corn production by Seventh District states increased 0.3%, reaching 6.8 million bushels, the second most ever, after 2016’s record.

In addition, soybean production by district states rose 4.6%, to 1.84 million bushels, the second largest ever, behind 2021’s record.

National corn stocks decreased 1% from 2023, while soybean stocks increased 3%. Although corn stocks declined, the USDA projected prices for the 20242025 crop year of $4.25 per bushel for corn, down 6.6% from the previous crop year.

Given the broader availability of soybeans, their prices were projected to be $10.20 per bushel, down 18%.

Using these prices, estimated revenues for the Seventh District states’ 2024 harvest would be down 6.3% for corn and 14% for soybeans from their 2023 levels.

Livestock

“In contrast, prices for livestock products were much higher at the end of 2024 than at the start of the year. In December 2024, the index of prices for livestock and associated products was up 33% from 2023; the prices for cattle, hogs and milk were up 10%, 18%, and 14% from a year earlier, respectively,” Oppedahl said.

“Moreover, given ongoing impacts from avian influenza, egg prices were up 132% from the year prior, though these

prices were down 4% from two years ago.

“According to the USDA’s February assessment for 2024, net farm income for the nation was projected to decline by 5.6% (or $8.2 billion) from 2023 despite lower input costs, mostly because of inventory adjustments and lower government payments.

“The dip in farm cash receipts from 2023 was minor given that the drop in cash receipts for crops was almost entirely offset by an increase in cash receipts for animals and their products.”

Nationally, 2024 real net farm income, though down from 2023, remained above its 2020 level. The district’s heavier reliance on corn and soybean revenues created tighter profit margins for lots of farms in the region.

Credit Conditions

District agricultural credit conditions continued to exhibit signs of deterioration during the fourth quarter of 2024.

In the final quarter of 2024, repayment rates for non-real estate farm loans were sharply lower than a year ago, plus loan renewals and extensions were noticeably higher than a year earlier.

The survey found 1.7% of agricultural borrowers were not likely to qualify for operating credit at the survey respondents’ banks in 2025 after qualifying in the previous year.

Non-real-estate farm loan demand relative to a year ago was up for the fifth quarter in a row. For the seventh time in a row, there were fewer funds available for lending than in the same quarter of the prior year at survey respondents’ banks.

The average loan-to-deposit ratio for the Seventh District moved up to 76.7% in the fourth quarter of 2024.

At the end of 2024, the district’s average nominal interest rates on farm operating and feeder cattle loans were somewhat lower than at the end of the third quarter of last year, while its average nominal interest rate on farm real estate loans was unchanged.

Average real interest rates for all three kinds of loans tracked by the survey were at their lowest levels since the third quarter of 2023.

Looking Forward

There were fewer responding bankers, just 4%, who projected agricultural land values to go up in the first quarter of 2025 than those, or 26%, who predicted them to go down.

“With that said, there seemed to be some transactions for farmland in places at much higher prices than for similar ground elsewhere; an Illinois respondent attributed this phenomenon to ‘strong competition among neighbors buying with cash on hand,’” Oppedahl said.

“Thus, there will likely be marked variability in sales prices for specific parcels. But again, on average, district farmland values were expected to be relatively flat or moving slightly downward in the first quarter of 2025, as they had been prior to the pandemic.”