Huntington bakery owner testifies about food prices [ con Schumer alert ]

Newsday ^ | Friday, May 2, 2008 | Kristen M. Daum

[count-your-change]

How much tax is there on a loaf of bread purchased at this bakery on Long Island (or any other for that matter)?

[Nathan Zachary]

"Many sane dairy farmers, being sane, find they can make more money by selling their feedstocks for biofuels if they reduce the size of their dairy herds, so they do so thus further driving up the price of milk-and beef"

And that is just pure poppy-cock.

feed corn doesn't fetch #1 grade prices, It's much much less than corn used for human food, which seems to be what liars in the media always quote.

Must be some real stupid dairy farmers in your area. In my area, dairy farmers don't sell off their excess feed until they have their silo's full for the winter.

They know that milk contract is worth far money money than some feed corn, which because feed crops aren't grown as 'clean" as possible to cut costs, they would pay high dockage as well. (dockage is when the elevator deducts grade points for contaminants, weeds other crop seeds, diseases, etc.)

Nice try though.

[Nathan Zachary]

"Similarly, not all beef producers grow all the feedstocks they need and they too must enter the marketplace to buy increasingly rare feedstocks because much of the feedstocks have been diverted for subsidized biofuels."

Not any I know. Only stock yards (last stop before the slaughterhouse) use a lot of feedstock, which is made from all sorts of "stuff" including the corn used in ethanol production. No matter how many times you say it, it is not true that feedstocks are divirted for biofuels. The corn, rye wheat,barley, etc. used for ethanol production have always been used for making animal feed. We are just making MORE of it now. Actually, feed prices should be going down because of this.

Someone is gouging? Can't be! Not in America! When farmers were getting 10 cents a lb for their beef a year or two ago, why were stores still charging $14 a lb for a prime rib steak?

In the 60's wheat was $14 a bushel. How come flour wasn't even MORE than what this baker is paying? Bread was only 10 cents a loaf back then.

Oh, and those would be 'subsidized feedstocks, wouldn't they? After all, farmers are subsidized to grow that stuff for below actual cost in order to artificially depress commodity prices. Wouldn't it be nice if the government quit robbing taxpayers of those billions of dollars? Then you could afford a loaf of bread.

[clodkicker]

You get about 60 loaves of bread from a bushel of wheat. If bread went up by 80 cents wheat would be like $48/bu. Might be some other factor other than the price of wheat.

[pepsionice]

As you look across all of society...its like this “deer-in-the-headlights” look when you ask them to correlate the upward trend of $2.50 a gallon gas to $4 a gallon. I would say that ninety percent of the public doesn’t get it.

If a guy uses a tank a week....doesn’t even matter about milage here....then he is spending around roughly $2340 per year (18 gallons a week) when gas was $2.50. Then you figure the same guy at $4 a gallon and you have $3744 spent. That $1300 difference doesn’t come from payraises or government bonus checks....its coming straight out of your pocket. Thats $1300 less for the typical family to spend. Thats a summer vacation or a new fridge or a new couch for mama or a new laptop.

Then you have to figure in the “other” folks...who truck your food to Wal-Mart, or grow your corn, or the school buses that pick up your kids, or the delivery guy who brings your bottled water by the house. They all upped their prices over the past year or two as well....so you can pretty much guess another $1000 a year went to that increase. All total, $2300 with your gas hike and their gas hike.

Ask yourself where a guy who makes $35k a year pulls $2300 out of his billfold? He is cutting every single corner and starting to deny himself and the family things. Even the guy who makes $60k a year has issues, because junior at sixteen expects a car which will trigger a $150 a month gas expense as well. The four years that junior is in college....means a car with $1800 in gas expenses minimum. All of these guys are now suffering.

So here is the trend. Kids at sixteen will start to notice that dad doesn’t automatically give them a car (he promises one at eighteen)....fewer car sales. The kids get to borrow mom’s car but get less gas allowance, so going to the movies everyweek with their buddies...is cut back to twice a month...thus the theaters make less money and fewer teenage flicks are generated out of Hollywood. That yearly five-day trip to Grandma’s four states over? Its canceled this year because of gas cost. The airline tickets you would normally buy for Thanksgiving to visit relatives are up by 40 percent over last year, so you decide to stay home. Wives start to shop in pairs to save gas money, and just make one trip per week to grocery. Even those 42 nights of bowling that you used to do per year, will be challenged and you might settle for a league where you bowl only 36 nights per year.

Across the spectrum, you can see a slowed economy and the standard money-makers from the hotels to bowling alleys to Hollywood suffering by the end of the year. Things aren’t going to be the same. And the amusing thing....is that I haven’t even gotten to the $5 a gallong scheme, which will trigger a huge revolt by the minimum wage crowd. Those folks will ask for a $8.5 minimum wage by spring of next year, to pay for their gas expenses...so more costs are going up across the entire economy.

I am the bearer of ill news and pretty dark predictions for the future...but this is reality which the news networks won’t speak about and you won’t see any intelligent guy from the local paper write about. We all better wise up about our future and look for some method of cheaper fuel because the American economy can’t function with gas at $6 or $7 a gallon which is the fair prediction for 2010.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) Schumer doesn’t worry about transportation, he’s carried around on all our backs. Since the gov’t prints money, he pretends to think that so do people who actually work for a living. BTW, “yoghurt”? ;’) Looks like a Siberian hut. ;’D

[SunkenCiv]

Not bad, not bad at all (the analysis, not the news).

[Nathan Zachary]

"You get about 60 loaves of bread from a bushel of wheat. If bread went up by 80 cents wheat would be like $48/bu. Might be some other factor other than the price of wheat."

Good to see there are other thinking people on these "they're burning our food!" alarmist threads.

Amazing how so many people believe what the very same people who cry "global warming" are now saying about bio fuels, as they silently put "carbon taxes" and make them pay for carbon credits on industries exhaust stacks.
Na, that has nothing to do with food prices going up...

[Nathan Zachary]

"And the amusing thing....is that I haven’t even gotten to the $5 a gallong scheme, which will trigger a huge revolt by the minimum wage crowd. Those folks will ask for a $8.5 minimum wage by spring of next year, to pay for their gas expenses...so more costs are going up across the entire economy."

It's already happening in Canada. $6.25 a gallon (imperial) and climbing. That's $5 gas here. Just like you predict, it's the poorest that are getting hit the hardest and first to start making noise.

Ironically they are the ones who suck up all the global warming BS and are leftwing moonbats. They think their economy is ok for now, but because of taxes and a much higher social burden, it will collapse like a rock before ours ever does.
We'll get a close up look at socialism in kaos.

[SunkenCiv]

Report: US Ethanol Production up 37% in Q1
6 April 2008
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/report-us-ethan.html

BENTEK Energy, LLC, an energy markets information company, estimates that the US ethanol plant fleet has produced 1.9 billion gallons of ethanol through the first quarter of 2008. This outpaces last year’s production in the first quarter by 517 million gallons, or nearly 37%. Average daily production through the first quarter of 2008 was approximately 21.4 million gallons per day [about 509,524 barrels], which compares to an average of 15.6 million gallons per day in the first quarter 2007 and an average of 17.8 million gallons per day for all of 2007... The US has approximately 134 ethanol plants in service in 2008 compared to 68 plants five years ago in 2003, with a production capacity of 7.229 million gallons per year (mgy), according to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA). An additional 77 plans under construction or expanding could bring a potential additional capacity of 6.217 mgy onstream.

[US ethanol production appears to equal .0246301542 US petroleum consumption, about 2.5%]

Basic Petroleum Statistics (data for 2006 except where noted)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html

Gallons of Oil per Barrel — 42
U.S. Crude Oil Production — 5,102,000 barrels/day
Texas - 1,088,000 barrels/day
Top U.S. Petroleum Refining States #1 - Texas 4,241,000 barrels/day
U.S. Petroleum Consumption — 20,687,000 barrels/day
U.S. Crude Oil Imports — 10,118,000 barrels/day
Share of US Oil Consumption for Transportation — 68%

U.S. Total Petroleum Exports — 1,317,000 barrels/day

[SunkenCiv]

Brazilian diesel trees, or Copaifera langsdorfii... According to Purdue University, a 100 acre plot of trees could produce about 25 barrels of oil per year.
http://gas2.org/2008/04/03/farmers-invest-in-diesel-producing-trees/

(yeah, that makes so much more sense than ethanol)

Renewable Fuels Association: How Ethanol Is Made
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/resource/made/

Corn prices nearly doubled between 2005 (about $2.25 a bushel) and 2007 (about $4 per bushel; now about $5.00 per bushel) and there was a 15% increase in U.S. corn acres last year. The scientists projected that much of this increased acreage would come from land in soybeans (50%), the Conservation Reserve Program (25%), and hay and pastures (25%). Recent data indicate that much row crop conversion was from cotton as well as soybeans.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080401112400.htm

[SunkenCiv]

How to Cut Oil Imports by Two Million Barrels a Week
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1473964/posts?page=169#169

Heavy-Metal Nuclear Power
American Scientist (abstract) | November-December 2004 | Eric P. Loewen
Posted on 11/25/2004 5:05:53 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1288533/posts

[I’m really just saving this second link for another topic I plan to start, but I’ve gotta crash now]

[SunkenCiv]

42 gallon [US, liquid] = 1 barrel [US, petroleum]
2,000,000 barrel [US, petroleum] = 84,000,000 gallon [US, liquid]
There are in excess of 200 million vehicles; if only 84 million burned one less gallon per week, it would save 84 million gallons of gas (irrespective of the fuel economy of any given vehicle).

U.S. Petroleum Consumption — 20,687,000 barrels/day
Share of US Oil Consumption for Transportation — 68%
Dependence on Net Petroleum Imports — 59.9%

2000000/7=285714.28571 (2 million / 7 days in a week)
20687000*.68=14067160 (bbl per day times .68)
285714.28571/14067160=.02031072979 (about 2 per cent of consumption)
.02031072979*.60=.01218643787 (if evenly split, would save 1.2 per cent of imports)

[nathanbedford]

We can both agree that farmers are not stupid, in fact, generations of them have been smart enough to figure out that they can make more money farming the "gubmint" then they can farming the land. Biofuels subsidies are a classic case of farming the government. The distortions and our agricultural system by the government have been a classic case of government meddling.

No one on this board would agree that we have suspended the laws of supply and demand. If the government increases demand by increasing subsidies to divert feedstocks for fuel, either the price of those feedstocks must rise or supply must increase. You have now suggested that the supply has increased. I am sure that it has for that is fully in keeping with the law of supply and demand. The problem is that the government' s subsidy arrangement is nearly infinite in its appetite. As I understand it Senator Hutchinson's bill was designed not to eliminate biofuels subsidies but to cap the amount of diversion away to biofuels. The projected diversion is breathtaking in its scope unless capped.

Our clever farmers must decide whether their feedstocks will generate more money by feeding it to their cattle or cows or by feeding it to the government. For example, if the government with its subsidies drives up the price of feedstocks, and the increase in supply is not nearly enough to offset the increase in demand created by the government, a farmer, seeing the price going up, is likely to decide that his feedstocks will go to biofuels unless the price of beef and milk rises high enough to warrant feeding it to animals. As long as the government keeps raising the bar, supply cannot catch up so the price must adjust. This is exactly what is happening.

[Nathan Zachary]

"If the government increases demand by increasing subsidies to divert feedstocks for fuel,"

You keep making a fool of yourself by stating something is being "diverted' to make fuel at the expense of food for something.

Nothing could be futher from the truth.

Do yourself a favor and read:

how ethanol is made

[nathanbedford]

Nathan: I refrained from commenting on your condescension in your first post. You continue the practice now. It is not like you, it is beneath you, and it is unbecoming.

I went to your citation and read the following:

Food vs. Fuel

While it is true increased ethanol production is creating a real market-driven price for corn,(emphasis supplied) energy prices, not ethanol, are responsible for much of the increase in the price of food.

[Nathan Zachary]

"Our clever farmers must decide whether their feedstocks will generate more money by feeding it to their cattle or cows or by feeding it to the government. For example, if the government with its subsidies drives up the price of feedstocks, and the increase in supply is not nearly enough to offset the increase in demand created by the government, a farmer, seeing the price going up, is likely to decide that his feedstocks will go to biofuels unless the price of beef and milk rises high enough to warrant feeding it to animals. As long as the government keeps raising the bar, supply cannot catch up so the price must adjust. This is exactly what is happening."

You haven't a clue what your talking about.

What are "feedstocks"?

Government subsidies drive DOWN commodity prices.

Ethanol production PRODUCES "feedstocks". Ethanol producers have been major suppliers of "feedstocks" for many decades.

As I said, there isn't a shortage of "feedstocks" anywhere, and ethanol production isn't the cause of any price increase. GASOLINE is.

You haven't a clue about beef or dairy farming. A dairy farmer would NEVER EVER sell off his silage ingredients (grains, corn) to "cash in" on higher commodity prices.
He grows field corn, FEED- which is indigestible to humans. this stuff is ground up,cob and all, mixed with other grains, alfalfa and shot up into a silo, where it ferments slightly, turning into a high protein sweet feed dairy cows like.

If he has extra airable land,(most do) THEN he grows crops especially for that commodity market.

Dairy farmers have a MILK QUOTA. That is their bread and butter. This they protect at ALL COSTS. No dairy farmer in his right mind would cut his herd and give up his milk contract quota just to sell a few bushels of corn o the commodity market- for what, a lousy 4 bucks a bushel?? THAT is INSANE.
Those milk contracts quotas are NOT EASY to come by. If you loose it, you will probably NEVER get it back. Some have been in their families for generations.

Do some reading, and you'll see why ethanol producers are complimentary to the feed industry, especially for poultry, pig and stock yard cattlemen.

Any increase of ethanol creates an increase of "feedstocks" animal feed production, vital to their businesses. This tends to drive DOWN those costs, not up.

[Nathan Zachary]

keep reading

[Nathan Zachary]

And there was nothing "condescending" there. I'm saving you from embarrassing yourself. You don't understand how farm practices work, subsidies work, and are jumping to wrong conclusions based on those misconceptions. For example. A dairy farmer doesn't get a subsidy to grow his feed.

He MAY get a payment to NOT grow anything for the commodity market on any remaining airable land not used for his dairy operation.

Therefore he wouldn't be taking any crop into the market, or else he'd have to pay back his subsidy, or go to jail. Or both.

[nathanbedford]

According to your source, we produce 16 billion bushels of corn and divert 2.3 billion bushels to biofuels. Of these 2.3 billion bushels about a half a billion equivalent is returned as distilled grain stocks. That is a net of 1.9 billion diverted, or nearly 12%.

All of these numbers come from this lobbying group in favor of subsidizing biofuels. If you take 12% of supply out of a market you will probably get a lot more than a 12% increase in price because price is affected at the margins.

How can you say that there is no diversion?