Posted on 02/13/2011 3:42:02 PM PST by mewykwistmas
"He said ethanol has been used as a scapegoat by food manufacturers to raise food prices, and that oil companies also have been trying to reduce ethanol production for their own business interests.
"For farmers and for jobs, everything about ethanol is good, good, good," Grassley said. "And now it's a little irritating for me to find some agricultural groups, some livestock groups, that are complaining about it ... But most of those agricultural interests are not family farm interests."
Following a report this week that U.S. corn reserves have hit their lowest level in more than a decade, analysts predict an increase in food prices. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's forecast blamed higher-than-expected ethanol use for the Advertisement decrease in the corn supply, stating that about 40 percent of corn grown in the country is used for ethanol production. "
(Excerpt) Read more at thonline.com ...
Funny you should pick 1960 corn at $1. Dad stored a lot of corn that year, something like 20,000 bushels, I know, I helped shovel most of it.
He was waiting for corn to be $1.25. It never got there. We shoveled it all again just to sell it for $1. A lot of work for zero dollars.
That signaled the end of profitable times for many grain farmers in the midwest.
It’s taken nearly 50 years for serious profits to return.
Yep. People have decided that cheap food is a “right,” just as they’ve decided that cheap medical care is a “right.”
And here, silly me, a Republican who thought we settled that question of someone having a “right” to another man’s labor in April of 1865.
Which, BTW, is still only about 50% of the inflation-adjusted price from before the Arab oil embargo shot up farm costs to the moon and farmers could no longer support a family on what they made on a farm.
I hear that buggy whip makers are having a hard time making a living too. Maybe they need a new line of work
“Campaign to vilify ethanol revealed”
Did they get another billion$ subsidy to study and reveal the ‘vilifiers’ ? Please! Cut the crap, throw the corn away if you want to, just don’t use government subsidies.
Morals aside, it’s also becoming a national security issue with all the mess and revolutions in the world.
“Yep. People have decided that cheap food is a “right,” just as they’ve decided that cheap medical care is a “right.”
If you don’t want to pay someone else the price they’re charging for food, you can go without buying it.
Just like you can with a buggy whip, right?
Nice try, but your argument is hollow. You can’t make it without government price protections (subsidies). You don’t need to be in the business. The family farm died 50 years ago.
Most of our food come from family farms.
Most of the subsidy money now handed out by the USDA for “not to plant food” are programs originated with the hunters/conservation movement to tell farmers how to run their operation. (ie, the CRP and other “conservation payment” plans). Since 1996 “Freedom to Farm” passed, most of the money handed to farmers is designed to a) keep the farmer in business in times of low commodity prices, b) give them access to cheap loans and insurance, c) make sure their bankers get paid.
The quota system and acreage reduction programs of the 30’s are history.
This is why we had back-breaking low commodity prices following “Freedom to Farm” - farmers came out from under the FDR-era quota system and started planting crops and putting animals on feed with gusto. And commodity prices promptly crashed. Subsequently, the GOP handed out a huge whopping load of money to keep farmers afloat in the face of crashing commodity prices.
Ah, but “free market Republicans” like to conveniently forget those days in the mid-late 90’s.
In hindsight, the US taxpayer would have gotten off cheaper if the GOP had not messed with ag programs at all and left the FDR programs in place. The transition away from the quota programs was poorly thought out, and the Congress should have anticipated the rush to gear up production and the ensuing crash in commodity prices. They didn’t, because “free market” economists keep living in fairy-tale lands of make believe, where markets have little to no friction, and farmers can switch out of a crop within the same planting season if they don’t like the economic reports. That, in fact, doesn’t happen.
Still, the quota system is dead and farmers are no longer paid to not grow crops, modulo the CRP program. The tobacco quotas were among the very last to go and now they’ve been gone for several years.
Since farmers are now receiving good prices for their crops, the hunter/conservation groups want to up the money paid to farmers to leave CRP ground fallow, otherwise farmers will end the CRP contracts and put that land into production. If you want to end the CRP program, talk to hunters/conservation groups, because they’re the biggest force behind it in DC. Farmers get pretty chump change on CRP land relative to what current crop prices could be getting them on much of the CRP registered ground - the CRP might pay them 10’s of dollars per acre vs. the ability to earn 100’s of dollars if they crop the land.
But even put all that aside. Many actual production farmers don’t participate in subsidy programs. Once you take the first dollar from Uncle Sugar, Uncle Sugar starts putting his nose up your backside, asking all manner of pesky questions, poking and prodding you about this, that and the other thing. When we were farming, I had regular arguments with the USDA, telling them that they could go pound sand, them saying “If you don’t participate in this survey/etc, you won’t be eligible for farm program “X”, and I’d reply “There is no such program in Nevada, and I wouldn’t participate anyway...” Good grief, they were a bunch of buttinski’s.
There’s lots of people who own farmland who are scamming the system (eg, city slickers who buy ranches that have CRP ground enrolled — and then they don’t run any cattle of their own on the ranch, they lease out the ground to a real rancher next door, but the outside owners keep making sure the CRP payments show up in their mailbox...). Want to attack the subsidy issue? First start a requirement that the person receiving the subsidy actually be the operator of the farm. Next, make sure that the person receiving the subsidy lives in the same state as the farm. Right there, you can get rid of some egregious grifter on the farm programs.
After that, we can start going after counter-cyclical, deficiency and other market-distorting payments.
Still, it isn’t going to enable you to tell the farmer at what price he should deliver his crop. Farmers are price-takers, not price-makers. In other words, farmers don’t set the price for their crops, subsidy or not.
Did you notice back up in the thread about Balding_Eagle saying his Dad was waiting for $1.25/bu corn one season? That’s how farmers operate - and that was in the 60’s, when the majority of the FDR-era programs was operative yet. Farmers are price takers - they decide when they’re going to sell based on the best price the market will give them.
Which, BTW, is almost *never* what they actually want for their crop.
Oh, I love getting that comment from you city slickers.
We have since sold our farm, but while we had it, we made it go without price protections, subsidies or one red friggin’ cent from Uncle Sugar. No government loans, government guaranteed loans, no nothin’ from Uncle Sugar.
Our crop was (in the majority) hay, which has no subsidy, price support or even futures traded on any exchange in the world. It was sold for cash. At *best*, there was an experimental program for crop insurance (which we didn’t use). There was no CRP acreage available for bid in our county, even if had wanted to bid a CRP contract.
So, you see, you’re simply another city slicker, full of organic manure.
Doubleplus good, Comrade Grassley!
Grassley... another Bob Dole (R- Archer Daniels Midland)
All gasoline in “urban areas”, including premium unleaded (which I use exclusively), contains ethanol.
Remove the mandate - end the subsidies - immediately. It does zip for “clean air”, it reduces gas mileage, and it corrodes engine parts.
It has exactly one benefit if used in sufficient quantities as in E85 - it has a higher octane rating than plain gas. A turbocharged, supercharged or very high compression engine can benefit a lot from that.
For the average Joe, it’s a detriment, not a benefit.
...forgot the sarcasm font. Sorry.
Ethanol is just the some old story of one half of this country telling the other half how they must live.
Why should I be forced to buy ethanol or anything else? I am supposed to be a free man. If I want gasoline and not ethanol why should I not have it? If I want to buy socks from someone in China why should I not be free to buy them?
No, it’s not a national security issue, nor is it a moral one. Ethanol production is a good idea, and it doesn’t lead to corn shortages, it doesn’t lead to wheat shortages, and doesn’t cause hunger.
IOW, you cut the crap.
We have since sold our farm, but while we had it...
Speaks for itself. How did this go from a discussion about the corn/ethanol boondoggle to a hayfarm your family doesn’t have?
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