Posted on 07/26/2007 8:47:56 AM PDT by Uncledave
Bush is just giving the maroons what they are demanding.
And they are buying the hype.
At the risk of being judgemental of the questions & questioners at Monday night's dumbocratic game show, it's no surprise.
“WE WILL SURVIVE!”
I have no doubt about that. Just because we can survive something doesn’t mean that something is a good idea. We survived The Great Depression. I don’t look forward to another one. I don’t agree with using food resources for fuel. You think oil speculation drives the price of gas up?? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Dublin Dr. Pepper too.
Not only all this, but I have seen it for my own eyes that acres upon acres of some of the world's richest soil in central Illinois in the lands surrounding Bloomington/Normal of McLean County are getting "paved" over by new subdivisions in a form of urban sprawl.
It's a huge shame.
One thing they could do is get rid of the rediculous practice of paying farmers for “set aside acres”. A tremendous waste of maney and land is going into that crap program.
Oh, I think you'd be surprised.
ADM is a multi-national corporation conducting business in over 100 countries. Make no bones about it. Their net worth back in 2000 was over $300 million.
And their former head, Dwayne O. Andreas, who is now Chairman Emeritus, gave BIG BUCKS to just about every politician who could influence Ag Policy in this country. Bob Dole is an old buddy of his, in fact.
Archer Daniels Midland Company is one of the largest agricultural processors in the world. Serving as a vital link between farmers and consumers, we take crops and process them to make food ingredients, animal feed ingredients, renewable fuels and naturally derived alternatives to industrial chemicals.
Because everything ADM does begins with agriculture, our partnership with the farming community is vital. Farmers are essential to the overall economy, and that's why we work to be essential to them - creating thousands of products from their crops, hundreds of markets for their crops.
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“I have no doubt about that. Just because we can survive something doesn’t mean that something is a good idea. We survived The Great Depression. I don’t look forward to another one. I don’t agree with using food resources for fuel. You think oil speculation drives the price of gas up?? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
It won’t that big a deal but yes, people will pay more for food that has been far too cheap for too long. Farmers are merely producing energy-dense biomass for fuel which is also where oil comes from. I am well aware that energy prices are escalating and I continue to take advantage of such a market by buying various stocks and mutual funds engaged in such investing.
Sure---"some" things WILL cost more. An excellent example will be things than need "whole corn" (like corn flakes and tortillas). And there will be TEMPORARY price increases in other products as different farmers shift production from one product to another. But on the whole, because the NON-FOOD demand for ethanol and biodiesel will swell TOTAL production of corn and soybeans, overall food prices will go DOWN in the long run, as the food byproducts from the non-food demand enter the food production chain.
"Thanks for helping me understand this debate."
Hope the above helps.
In the case of milk... not really! About a third of the cost of your gallon of milk is the packaging, another third is the cost of transportation and the last third is raw product.
CRP program is the best conservation program ever invented to preserve this nation’s most valuable resource, which incidentally did more to make it a world power than any other, farmland. If you want to help out, stop urban areas from covering every inch with concrete and buildings and force people in cities to build up, not out.
The last few years you I have been paying $3.50 to $4.00 for a 50lb sack of deer corn, just a few days ago I saw it for $6.00.
LOL...you're right....my bad...
We are the net extractors of food from the Third World. Many of the foods that we have encouraged (and sometimes forced) second and third world producers into growing for us are high value luxury foods, rather than traditional staple foods of that country.
Vandana Shiva, for example, has documented the large-scale replacement of traditional coastal rice farms with shrimp farms for the export market (Shiva, Stolen Harvest 23). Much of the best land in South America, Asia and Africa is now covered with coffee plantations, producing for export to wealthy nations. Suggesting that poor nations, who have now entirely adapted their agriculture and their land to grow food for rich nations should now live on their coffee and shrimp comes with some logistical problems at best. Some second and third world nations, like Brazil, which exports quite a lot of grain, or uses it for meat production for export, would be able to avoid hunger in this scenario, others would not.
RESERVES US corn for ethanol consumption will again outstrip US corn exports. Because of land increasingly being allocated to growing biofuel, the global grain market reserves have fallen from 120 days in 2000 to an estimated reserve of only 40 days by 2008, with corn reserves projected at falling to even lower levels of 20 days reserves.
With US corn, there is a significant gap between USDA projections for corn supply vs. the amount of corn required for ethanol production - requiring a further 15 million acres to be planted by 2010 just to negate this initial gap.
Why is it that we feel we need to import specialized food from poor nations? Because in the past farm producers have been burnt too many times with promises of good returns on their spring plantings, only to be screwed by commodity traders when the produce goes to market.
Another reason is that in order for our government to provide cheap food to freeloaders, the food has to be obtained from less relaible sources like China. Keep the masses well fed and they are not as likely to complain about other things their government is doing (or not doing).
And if those poor countries are not capitalizing on our appetite by getting better prices that can better sustain their economy, that is tough luck. Of course, the same commodity traders are taking advantage of the foreign food producers much the same way they took advantage of the now wary American producers who have been ripped off and bankrupted by the tens of thousands each and every year for the past 40 plus years.
Corn prices were sustained at about or just under a $2.00 a bushel price, the price farmers recieved back in 1962, for over 40 years with little fluctuation. Given the cost of inflation that $2.00 corn in the 1960’s had the buying power of about 50 cents after equipment, land and tax inflation.
So that is the reward for being the most productive agricultural system in the World? And we have been DONATING food to the turd world for as long as I can remember but it seems like it is always the same places suffering from starvation. Now if those nations would divert their attention from tribal and territorial wars and band together, they could have something to show for their efforts and not be so hungry. But we keep sending aid to the same suspects. That propegates the myth of starvation. If those people would settle their differences they would not be squandering their resources that could feed them and make them prosper.
True we are a consuming nation and we consume 30% of the energy for 5% of the World population. But keep in mind America is the most productive nation by 10 times the next nearest industrial nation. Even the State of California has a gross productivity that is higher than the majority of nations.
I remember not many years ago farmers were dumping corn on the ground because the price was so low they couldn’t justify drying the corn in bins. I personally know many farmers who went broke because food was too cheap for them to make a profit on. It is a crying shame that people who grow food for a living cannot make a living and go broke.
I am afraid that the days of generosity are over in the food industry. If you want to eat, be prepared to pay. The days of working dawn to dusk for poverty wages are over.
There is so little corn in most corn related products, a few cents a bushel more does not equate double digit price increases. But maybe the higher transportation costs related to petroleum prices do? Maybe finally food is being priced at a sustainable level for the producers. Cheap food has become almost an entitlement for us. However I find little gratitude in people for all the years farmers have been literally giving food away.
If you increase the input price for food products like beef and chicken like that, you are going to get a serious spike in food prices. Get off of bashing Kellogg's corn flakes; that won't wash here.
BTW, what about that $300 BILLION farm bill? Where is THAT going? To Kellogg?
The BIG story here is that devoting 100% of the grain crop to ethanol would only supply about 20% of the demand for gasoline. As more and more grain is diverted to ethanol, the price of corn and food in general is going to continue to spike. The law of unintended consequences in action . . . .
Based on the rate of inflation for other products corn should be selling for about $6.00 a bushel.
Just because there is a bump in price over a one or two year period does not make up for over 40 years of subsistence payments and grain dumping.
And Kelloggs does benefit from the farm bill.
A bushel of corn is 56 pounds. That will derive 70 12 oz boxes at $4.00 a box. Say the farmer gets a whopping $3.50 a bushel for corn. Looks like Kelloggs is getting $280.00 for that same bushel. Looks to me like the markup is at the top rather than at the bottom producer end.
As always, the farmer gets the smallest percentage for his productivity but gets blamed for the cost of food because he has found his own value added use for corn into ethanol. Rather than giving his corn to Kelloggs so they can make a 95% markup on a $3.50 bushel of corn, the farm sends corn to a local ethanol plant. That saves transportation costs and allows the farmer to (GASP) make a profit. Gosh and all that corn makes a fine high protein feed that is still being fed to livestock and poultry and remains in the food chain for human consumption.
Gosh we must blame the farmer for the rising cost of food. it isnt the trucking business or the packaging business or the raising wages of processors or the higher cost of operating a grocery store that adds double digit increases to the cost of food.
Blaming the higher cost of food on ethanol is a class warfare scapegoat. If food is so expensive, why are there so many fat people??
And why is it always the same parts of the world that are always starving dispite all the free food aid rolling in over the past half century? Because there is a socialist class warfare going on in the world. The would be manipulators of the rich need a immediate crisis of starvation and poor to lay a guilt trip of how oppressed some people are and why we should freely volunteer our wealth to help those poor starving oppressed people..
As usual, the ones at the top get the bulk of the money and the average farmer gets his hand cut off for asking.
I bet if you dig deeper into the farm bill over half of the money will be going to non farm pet projects as is the case for most appropriation bills.
I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that the Iowa caucuses come so early?
The point of this discussion isn’t to begrudge farmers for making a higher profit. Of course ethanol will make them more money.
The point of the discussion is the effects of ethanol on our nation’s land use and if the benefits of producing it are worth it (given it’s energy density, requirements for transporting it, etc)
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