Posted on 06/17/2008 4:34:11 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The flood waters of Iowa has just started to recede, but America is already feeling the impact of the flood on corn prices which hit $8 a bushel on Monday.
After preliminary reports of poor harvest for July delivery came out, corn price went up to $6 a bushel in late May and closed $7.325 a bushel on Monday at the Chicago Board of Trade. Corn contracts for later months even exceeded $8 and then lowered a bit at $8.
Iowa, one of the largest corn and soybean producer in the U.S. was flooded by as much as 14 inches of rain the past two weeks, according to the National Weather Service. As a result, land for corn and soybean planting would be reduced up to 4 million acres, said Dan Basse, president of AgResource Company.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated 43 percent of 2008's corn harvest would be in fair to poor condition as against only 30 percent in 2007. The Midwest flood would result to half a billion bushels reduction in corn harvest from the June 10 forecast of 11.735 billion bushels, the lowest level since 1996.
What would compound the situation is the competition for corn between the food and the clean fuel industries. Because of the jump in corn prices, VeraSun, the U.S. largest ethanol producer, delayed two new plants. Share prices of poultry producer Pilgrim's Pride and pork processor Smithfield Foods registered sharp declines following the increase in corn price.
The high corn price could trigger an increase in meat prices within the next 6 to 18 months, forecasts Bill Lapp, principal at the Advanced Economic Solutions. This, in turn, could lead to food inflation in the U.S. hitting 9 percent yearly through 2012.
Basse projects an even higher $8.75 per bushel price for corn if the U.S. would experience more weather problems in the coming months.
It seems like such an immense joke, played on we dopes by Mother Nature...even SHE knows not to put FOOD in your fuel tank!
Chatted with two dairy farmers at work, yesterday. It's costing them $500 a MONTH in milk replacement (basically, baby formula) for their new calves this season because of the cost of feed. (And calves eat a LOT!) And no, no Government Subsidies for them!
I spent $30 for 100 lbs. of chicken feed this week. (I have 50 laying hens.) No more. They're back on bugs and grass for the rest of the summer!
Is the USDA still paying farmers not to plant the stuff?
As Yakov Smirnov would say, What a country.
buh, buh, but....it’s for the environment!
There might not be enough season left to plant corn for a yield, but there is certainly enough time to replant soybeans and get one soybean crop out of this tragedy.
A suggestion...why don’t we sell our corn to the Muzzies for $130 a bushel? Offset the price of oil. /sarc
Peak Corn is here!
Let me tell you an icky, strange story. I was managing my mother’s garden and flock of chickens over the summer while she was away about 7 years ago.
I’d delivered a big sack of seed, and placed it into a big Igloo after feeding them. I guess I had to leave quickly for some reason, and when I came back two days later it’d rained and there was water in the igloo. I just shut the lid, bought another bag, put it in the shed.
I opened the igloo about a week later out of curiosity, and it was *swarming* with mealbugs, big ones. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Once I stopped screaming I got a shovel and fed them to the birds. This batch lasted about two months before they all pupated and my mom had a fat, healthy happy flock when she got back.
I’ve never tried to re-create this but it was an amazing agricultural windfall.
So am I.
Ethonol is going to go down as one of the biggest financial boondoggles in US political history.
That's essentially what's been going on with the corn to ethanol business. In fact, some of the varieties being grown for ethanol really aren't all that suited to use as food ~ certainly not canned corn, and probably not even chicken feed.
The big picture is that we have yet another cool, dry season, this time in the Northern Hemisphere, and grain crops are not doing well.
Note, "cool, dry" turns into floods because all that cooler, dryer air is able to force greater condensation of moisture found in subtropical air wafting Northward.
The only reason the MSM is peddling the idea that corn is being misused is because they want to avert everyone's attention from the fact that our climate is rapidly shifting over to a barely pre-Ice Age condition.
I don't think the MSM is aware that it is common in the cornbelt to actually get three crops per year (in a good year). They write their stories like folks only get one crop.
I’ve got 700 acres of soybean around me. One part of the field is under water, and back on “the big hill” it looks like there was a mini-mudslide, but there will easily still be 695 acres of soybean to harvest. :)
FIL’s fields are fine; all 250 acres in field corn this year, but the pond is the highest he’s ever seen it...and he’s 72.
I can hardly wait for the mosquito hatch in 5, 4, 3, 2...
“Peak Corn is here!”
LOL!
“I’ve never tried to re-create this but it was an amazing agricultural windfall.”
All protein, no fillers! :)
I always take home bags of feed/sunflower seed from work that have “moths” in them. I open them up, put them in the shed, the moths leave and I have perfectly good seed or feed to use for the critters. :)
“Ethonol is going to go down as one of the biggest financial boondoggles in US political history.”
One would hope. However, have you seen a Government Program that’s been abolished to date? ;)
“...the fact that our climate is rapidly shifting over to a barely pre-Ice Age condition.”
Yep. We had 100” of snow this season. And I shoveled every d@mn one of ‘em! And it hasn’t stopped. We’re in the very same weather pattern we were stuck in all winter, hence all of the tragic flooding here in the Midwest.
I’d WELCOME Global Warming, if it were, in fact, true.
I think converted 50lbs of scratch into 150 lbs of bugs, adding water once per week or so, it was crazy.
This is the most important reason not to tie our energy needs to crops of any sort. There is no way to know what will happen - famine, drought, floods, you name it....Though it may seem to be “renewable,” there are just too many variables. At least what we are pumping out of the ground, we know it’s there.
Sorry to bring this up, but I am concerned about the price of groceries one year from now.
Quite honestly, right now, I don’t see how the poor are going to be able to afford food.
A year from now, many livestock herds will have been liquidated, due to the lack of feed available to feed them. Yes, some farm animals will starve to death because their owner cannot find feed. As for horses and other companion animals, the same fate will face them, since the Feds have outlawed the slaughter of horses.
Corn and soy (and wheat to a lesser degree) will be in such short supply there won’t be enough to go around, at any price.
I wouldn’t panic yet. America can feed the world ten times over. The MINUTE a farmer’s children are hungry or their livestock starts to dwindle, they’ll pull back the reins.
Well, the farmers I know, will. But it really is dangling a carrot, these prices! My FIL has farmed for twenty years (since he retired from Engineering) and he has NEVER seen such prices in all of those years.
And my Dairy Farmer friends? Yeah, they were complaining, but it’s what they do best as they take their big, fat Milk Checks to the bank. ;)
To me, it seems like common sense, with a built-in stop-gap where a ‘worst case scenario’ won’t happen. I hope I’m right, and no disrespect, of course, but I hope you’re wrong. :)
Trust me. I WANT to be wrong.
We’ve been farming on the same farm for the past 40 years.
A lot of the drowned out corn cannot be replanted because there isn’t enough time for it to mature. So world stocks are going to be in short supply next summer.
There is a much better chance for replanted soybeans to reach maturity. But the yield will be short.
You speak from experience. Iowa has been MUCH harder hit than we have here in Wisconsin; and we’ve had it BAD.
I wonder if the Socialists on either coast, and in Washington, D.C. will learn from this and FINALLY understand where their food comes from?
I’m not holding my breath. ;)
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