The oil is in Alaska, the Gulf, and all the dipsticks are in Washington DC.
From the Gateway Pundit.
Posted on 05/02/2008 9:01:29 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Thanks for sharing. I'm thinking that following the media-driven panic over prices, the reflex action of the consumer was to immediately cut back on non-essential purchases of any kind. That's a major hit on overall sales, so despite the prices increases, total net is going to plummet.
They'd have to respond pretty quick to get people to reach back into their pockets before more frugal buying habits become routine and those stores really begin to bleed...Here's to hoping that the talk of a decrease in the price of commodities is more than talk.
As a general rule, most farms are a small share of their parent’s land, split among the children. Those that chose to remain on the farm then rent large amounts of acreage from their neighbors.
So corn land competes with pasture, soybeans, etc.
Also, because of the corn growing season requires the entire summer, corn can not be double cropped with anything else in the manner of wheat and soybeans, for instance.
You also neglect to mention that hog operations are huge and rarely grow all of their feed. Many grow none.
I have read of several TX cattle feeding operations that have 20,000 cows. That would take a lot of land to grown corn. I have some trouble visualizing a feed lot operator that could run a feedlot with 20,000 cows and at the same time manage the amount of land required to grow all of his feed.
Maybe it is common in TX, but whether it is or not, your comments do not address it.
Chicken feeding operations are similar. Someone else mentioned here that the laws of supply and demand are still operative whether the gummit tries to cancel them out with subsidies or not.
Many compete for corn, but even more interesting is that many more compete for the land required to grow corn.
In my opinion, the really smart farmer will continue to plant whatever crop he has done well with in the past. He already has the equipment, the expertise and the track record in whatever those crops might be.
And corn ethanol is a bubble that will burst, ruining anyone who is into it whole hog.
In my earlier, I stated: “Also, because of the corn growing season requires the entire summer, corn can not be double cropped with anything else in the manner of wheat and soybeans, for instance.”
The conclusion to that statement, which I neglected to include, is that for every acre planted in corn, an acre is lost to both wheat and soybeans.
So plant one acre of corn and lose two acres of food crop.
It is a little more complicated than that, but it makes the point that corn for ethanol has many examples of the law of unintended consequences and we ignore them at our peril.
The oil is in Alaska, the Gulf, and all the dipsticks are in Washington DC.
From the Gateway Pundit.
How many farmers have switched from planting wheat to planting corn?
Not very many as most extra corn acres came from
CRP and former cotton acres between 2006 and
2007. Now a whole bunch of wheat got planted on
corn acres after last falls corn harvest. Wheat harvest
July and part of that will be planted late year soybean
crop. Farmers will do all that is physically
and financially able to be done to produce.
If the speculators, oil people, and naysayers
don’t screw them up. . ..Ed
All of ‘em. It’s call crop rotation. :’)
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