Page 2-Deere's Furrow April, 1948

My Dad had a 490 back in the 50s.

My dad had a 490 too. He started out farming 240 acres with about 200 acres in row crops in 1948 with a 290 planter. After a couple years he traded the 290 for a big for that time 490. The 490 did the job till 1968. I barely remember him using a check wire with that 490 back in the fifties.

80 bushel corn today you have a problem. I m sure back then that was great. What would the price of corn been in 1955. RB

Back in the late 50's or early 60's my granpa's neighbor raised 100 bushel corn (he hauled a lot of manure on it). people from town would come out to see it because they had never seen 100 bushel corn.

IIRC, when I started farming in "72, the national corn yield was around 75 bpa.

My Dad won the Waseca County MN 4H corn yield contest with 118 bpa corn in 1936. I still have the metal they gave him that has his name and the winning yield stamped, one of my prize possessions.

In the late 1940's and early 1950's a 290 planted the corn on my uncle's farm....A couple of fields that were plagued with quack grass were check row planted so they could be cultivated lengthwise and crosswise. I cultivated these fields with a Farmall H and mounted 221 2 row cultivator. 100 bushels per acre of ear corn was a good yield in those days.
When I started "hobby farming" about 100 acres for corn and soybeans in 1980 I bought a nice used 490 planter and set it up on 36 inch rows and planted my corn and beans with iit and got about 120 dry bushels of dry shelled corn and 30 bushels of beans per acre. All the crops were cultivated with a John Deere H with a 2 row mounted cultivator the first time through and 2 more times through with a 4 row mounted cultivator on my Farmall Super M. No spraying at all. That was 1980 and grain prices were decent so I actually made a few bucks even after hiring a friend with a 4400 combine and a semi truck to harvest and sell my crops. I had adjusted the planter to drop corn on a 6 inch spacing and planted the bears as heavy as the planter could plant.
I farmed the same land in 1981 and 1984 but never did better than what I did in 1980. The land was in the PIK program in 1982 and 1983.

When dad planted beans with the 490 the seed hoppers weren't big enough for him to make a full 1/2 mile round on one fill and he was too tight, er, conservative to buy extensions. He carried a couple of pails of bean seed along on the planter so he could throw a little more in part way across the field. That was back when beans were planted at about 60-70 pounds per acre or approximately 180,000 to 190,000 seeds per acre to shade out weeds.

Cash corn prices for April 1948 was $2.20 Not far off from today's prices!!

Iowa state Extension services has a chart and records 1955 average price at $1.44. Ironically as late as 99-2000 it records at $1,72- $1.75.

I paid dad $1.05 for corn and .72 for oats when I raised a few pigs in 54. We had some corn go 75 bu per acre about then also. All corn was wire checked and dad never had a pound of commercial fertilizer or a weed sprayer on the place. Lot of walking beans pulling or chopping sun flowers though.