at least half the fields round here are 90 corn due to wet fields in the spring...
Posted on 09/25/2011 11:37:09 AM PDT by lowbridge
High energy prices and bad weather -- including blistering hot temperatures, flooding in some places and drought in others -- hurt this year’s agricultural output. But farmers agree that a major problem is the soaring price of corn, which is used directly in products like cereal, and indirectly as livestock feed.
Corn is nearly twice as expensive now as it was last summer -- even though US farmers planted the second-largest crop since World War II.
Why? Well, 40 percent of the crop goes to produce 12.6 billion gallons of ethanol to meet the government’s renewable fuel standards. In other words, much crop land is being used to produce ethanol, not to produce food.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
That's not the point, and I suspect you know it. The point is more and more land that would otherwise be used to grow food for humans or livestock, is being used to produce corn intended to be used as fuel (and therefore not for human consumption.)
Using land to grow corn to be used for fuel shrinks the available supply for humans and livestock, therefore driving up prices. Combined with the drought in some parts of the country and excessive rain in other parts, the combination of the three is causing prices to skyrocket.
Any reasonable thinking person knows that growing corn to be used as fuel is a bad idea from an economics and energy perspective. It takes more energy to produce ethanol than it returns. That's just the law of thermodynamics in play. The economics of ethanol from a fuel price/food price perspective isn't pretty either. It's a losing proposition any way one looks at it. The only beneficiaries are the ethanol producers who suck at the government teat for our tax dollars.
Contrary to the tone of the article, we are flooded with foodstuffs, from corn and soybeans to poultry and pork.
Without exports our food supply would collapse in bankruptcy.
See tagline
You're right: it's crazy that we're feeding the Chinese while we're paying these high prices at home.
Enough, shut China off.
What should be done with the mountains of surplus grain?
Didn't grow any...Usually get it at the local farmer's market...Not this year tho...6 bucks a dozen...They can feed it to their pigs...
See #42
You hedge in commodities or something? What's your interest in having these high prices anyway?
See #43.
at least half the fields round here are 90 corn due to wet fields in the spring...
At the time I was rolling my eyes but some guy didn’t have money for feed and traded us 2 steers, we have one in the freezer and the other one will be soon.
Then my son wanted to buy some cattle that our neighbor was selling so we also have 6 bred cows, 5 steers and 1 heifer. He got them ridiculously cheap-long story-so as long as we have feed, we’re okay on the beef front.
Then we had a great misfortune, hail came across our farm and almost ruined all of our crops but one good thing came out of it, the seed company isn’t going to harvest the milo and we can bale it up for the cows.
Very good!
We raised our own so it was strange having to buy meat from a grocery when we sold out after I was grown.
Much of the land on which corn is grown isn’t really suitable for other crops. Corn is a relatively short season crop compared to a lot of them.
What would you want them to grow on those acres?
Another thing, growing produce is prohibitively expensive, and labor intensive and riskier than heck, especially those crops that require hand labor.
Unlike corn, cotton, other grains, there is a small window between harvest and consumption. Even if you are going to a canner, it is risky and you have 1000’s of dollars invested.
The fresh produce market is the most crooked market in this country and now most of it is dominated by Walmart. They pay but they regularly overbuy to guarantee availability and then they reject loads for the lamest excuse, like there was a fly in the truck.
Yes, the communist government has made many deals to make all things worse. And it won’t stop using the needed corn for food because it gets all money from it’s ethanol scam paid by WE THE PEOPLE, in many ways.
These moutains of surplus have existed since at least the 1950s. Back then they existed on the streets of smalltown rural America, piles and piles of grain ‘built’ on back streets closed for just that purpose.
As the surplus became even greater, grain elevators began construcing ‘temporary’ surplus storage, ‘building’ even larger piles. Over time these temporary facilities are being replaced with permanant structures, each holding upwards of a million bushels each. Countless such structures are being built all across America.
The bottom line is that the American Farmer produces way more than the American consumer uses.
By way of example, are you aware the entire pork industry nearly collapsed into bankruptcy the spring of 2010? The financial experts estimated that the industry was only 60 days from total financial collapse.
The reason? Overproduction, too much pork. The reason for too much pork? Corn overproduction in 2009.
My interest, as a former farmer, is getting the truth out about our food supply. Answering emotional based arguments with facts is also satisfying.
LOL
Rice bran works real well...cheaper too.
Helps to live in a rice growing state though. ;-)
“Before the combustion engine, a good deal of cropland went to grow feed for horses,”
And you could burn Road Apples for fuel!
Momma, I don't want to eat this corn. I don't LIKE corn!
Ah, little Wing Wang, you MUST eat your corn so you grow up to be smart and strong. And just think of all those starving kids over in America! They have to pay dearly to purchase their food and many of them cannot afford good meals. You are very fortunate, just as the Americans used to be.
“Today will be looked upon as the good ol’ days.”
Agreed. This seem to get better in a few aspects, and much worse in several aspects, each and every year. I miss the days of my youth, I am fond of the stories of my parents youth, and I can only imagine what freedoms my grandparents had (economic, political, etc.) My how the leftists have been allowed to run free for the last 150 years (mostly the last 100)!
That will not stop the anti-ethanol crowd from claiming a cause and effect relationship. This is shaping up as a replay of the 2007-2008 food vs. fuel furor, when ethanol was again blamed for all the woes of the world. Sober analysis eventually exposed the game, but not until the public tone was set. At that time, in fact, all commodities (not to mention U.S. housing prices) were spiking, led by oil. Corn was not the leader; in fact, it trailed many other food commodities, as well as industrial commodities and oil, in its percentage increase. The commodities bubble burst, of course, as the world slid into recession, and corn prices receded along with other agricultural commodities. I'm sure you noticed your grocery store bills plummeting as well. (That's a joke, folks.)
Coupla points:
(1) In recent decades, the farmgate price of commodities has accounted for less than 20% of consumers' costs at the grocery store. Whether the figure is a bit higher or lower now, I don't know, but that's the ballpark. The biggest single factor in consumer food costs is labor, followed by energy.
I don't begrudge grocery store employees what they make. It's a competitive industry, I have plenty of choices about where to shop, and I'm grateful to the grocery industry for making an incredible array of global foods available to me 24/7, in all seasons. Incredible, when you think about it, and I happily pay for it. But I recognize that has more to do with what I pay in the checkout line than the price of corn.
(2) The U.S. has built out the ethanol industry with increased production. During the boom years of the ethanol buildout in the last decade, we were simultaneously setting export records for corn. U.S. yields took a hit this year due to floods in the spring and drought this summer, but the long term trend is still up, due to better genetics and precision farming.
(3) Yes, a lot of U.S. corn now goes for ethanol. But you can't look at this and say "that corn is being diverted from food and fuel," as if corn production were a zero sum game. That is corn that would never have been planted absent ethanol demand, and it is produced with technologies that would never have been developed or deployed absent ethanol demand. This is a classic demand-pull story, and it has generated a one-third increase in U.S. production since 1990 (down a bit this year due to weather). U.S. yields are expected to continue to increase for the forseeable future, and as GMO's gain international acceptance, foreign yields will increase dramatically as well.
(4) To reprise: U.S. ethanol demand is stabilizing. The big new factor today is the emergence of China as a net corn importer. (China is the world's #2 corn producer and had been exporting corn until last year.) The global middle class is growing rapidly, and world food demand is expected to double by 2050.
(5) Food is probably going to get more expensive whatever we do. By any historical measure, food prices in the U.S. and the developed world generally have beeen extraordinarily low since WWII. As the rest of the world develops, food may be revalued. Since the U.S. is the world's agricultural leader, this actually works to our advantage in the long run. From a humanitarian standpoint, the poorest people in the world are subsistence farmers in developing countries, and anything that raises returns to agriculture is beneficial to them. If relatively wealthier urban consumers pay moderately more for food, so be it. I am not a farmer, by the way, but if the next turn of the wheel benefits farmers vis-a-vis urbanites, I'm ok with it.
(6) The next Farm Bill should reflect these new realities. This is the time to drive a stake through the heart of farm subsidies -- i.e., shift to an insurance based safety net -- and return farmers to producing for real markets, not for government programs.
But that is totally wrong. First off corn has been planted for decades and acreage hasn’t expanded that dramatically in the last 20 years. Corn can’t even be planted every year, it has to be rotated with something else. Even then there was surplus. That was a big part of why ethanol was introduced, because there was so many surplus years farmers were losing their shirts.
#2 Yellow dent corn isn’t used for food. The closest you get to that is fructose for soft drinks and food starch a stabilizer. A good majority is used for livestock. Thing is, the DDGS can be used for animal feed. If you take off the stillage, which is the fat and leftover sugars, you have DDG, which is mostly protein a high value animal feed. Nothing is wasted, unless you count the soda pop industry.
Ethanol does not take more energy to produce than it yields. That was bogus info put out by Dave Pimentel out of Cornell, a fairly radical leftist who lumps everything into his equation even it is pre-existing or dual use. Most studies have show a positive energy balance for ethanol.
China is another huge factor in why corn is going up, as is our Fed printing dollars. I agree that mandates and subsidies should be eliminated, but fermenting corn into useful products is a good idea.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.