Posted on 02/06/2011 9:39:48 PM PST by FromLori
Well, I guess there won’t be anymore “starving kids in China”.
But let’s keep using corn as fuel! That makes sense... not.
I’ll believe Republicans are serious about cutting government spending when they abolish farm subsidies. As John Wayne used to say, “That’ll be the day.”
Buy fertilizer.
all I know is I’m going have to really do some shopping at Costco....the big stores carry the big cans of corn....
Anything we can sell them at a fair price, we should
Sure just preparing you all for food inflation here :)
“...and just a couple of weeks ago, the EPA announced that they would mandate an increase of ethanol usage in gasoline by 50%! 40% of the US corn crop was already going into ethanol. Do the math! And corn in storage is near 35-year lows already. It’s a good thing this grain has a golden color because it will be worth its weight in the yellow metal soon.”
does this mean we can stop giving farmers AG subsidies now?
I have the old plow out by the barn; guess I better start looking for a mule & some hitching harness for it.
1 pd wheat/loaf of bread @ 50 lbs/1,000 sq ft, X 43,560 sq ft/acre -50% weather, pest, and wild life losses... = 1/2 acre split by wheat, oats, rye, & barley; and maybe 25’ X 25’ of field corn to feed the feathered egg machines.
That just leaves pellets for the rabbits to buy.
Never thought I’d have to turn into a Hippie hillbilly after I “retired”.
Maybe time to get rid of the ethanol supports? Ya think!
corn bump
And corn prices still have to double to get near the inflation-adjusted prices to give the farmer the same return as he had in August, 1973, just before the Six Day War and the Arab oil embargo shot fuel prices through the roof.
People in the US have had cheap food on the backs of farmers for nearly 40 years.
Thanks to the Fed and the Free Trade yahoos, we now have a situation where we have a huge trade deficit with China and about the only thing we have to export to China is food.
The Chinese can buy a tremendous amount of food with the trade surplus they have in US dollars that they no longer want to keep in the form of US Treasury debt.
And after the corn is used in ethanol production, it is used for animal feed.
Which was the majority of the US field corn market in the first place.
Here’s a listing of various animal feed products and prices:
http://agebb.missouri.edu/dairy/byprod/AllCompanies.asp
See that “distillers grain” in the listings? That’s the by-product of ethanol production. “Wet” means just that, “dried” means the moisture was cooked off for denser transport.
More grain sales by U.S. farmers means more wealth at home. This is good because it is a renewable resource that can be expanded by planting on more land.
I’d rather it be used for something, anything HERE than putting it on a barge and sending it to China, for a great deal less profit.
Nothing’s wasted in ethanol anyway, the byproducts are used for animal AND human feed.
Meanwhile a close friend of mine here in Iowa has raised hogs for ages but now he's about to go out of business due to corn prices.
The ethanol boondoggle was doomed from the start as it takes more resources to manufacture than the fossil fuels it's supposed to replace. It doesn't even break even economically...which is why it has to be subsidized by us taxpayers.
I guess ethanol looks good on paper and in theory, but when you get down to the farm it's another story.
Shouldn't coal be cheap in Newcastle?
We produce almost all of the world's surplus food. Our capacity to grow is so much we pay farmers to NOT grow, so that the oversupply will not bring the prices down even further.
If there is a surplus of supply, even after it is artificially kept low, and a growing but limited demand, why shouldn't prices be cheap at the point of production?
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