As Corn and Soy Pile Up,.........

As Corn and Soy Pile Up, Here?s Why U.S. Farmers Will Plant More
Poke here

Things have changed. Wasn't that many years ago the American farmer produce nearly 70% of the worlds food. Now it's less than 50%. If they ever get the people in Africa to really start farming and exporting on a massive scale things are really going to go south for the farmers here in the US.

Rick

When I read stuff like this it makes me think back to the old test where Joseph told pharaoh what his dream meant with the 7 skinny cows coming up out of the Nile to eat the 7 fat cows. Having some food stored up is not all a bad thing.

(quoted from post at 12:16:38 03/30/16) When I read stuff like this it makes me think back to the old test where Joseph told pharaoh what his dream meant with the 7 skinny cows coming up out of the Nile to eat the 7 fat cows. Having some food stored up is not all a bad thing.

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It is if you are losing money growing it then paying to store it too.

Rick

Same thing happened in the late 1800s, again in the 20s and again in the 80s.

That actually wasn't too bad of an article, its rare to see actual info on farming in the common press any more.

I'd say the strong USA dollar is the real killer this go round, it makes our ag products too expensive to the world.

Funny wears to lose about $50 an acre, that is right at where my property taxes are. I hear Nebraska property taxes are double that in places.

Hum.

Paul

You are right the taxes are high here but marginal ground is still selling for close to 8000 an acre. I dont have one of those special pencils yet. I think old tanker is right about Africa among other countries.

Africa is sure interesting. Lot of land, gonna be tough to make it prime farm land most of it has some real problems. Fair number of people, if they could settle down into part of an economy they would be a lot of mouths that are underfed, wonder if they could farm more than what they would eat as they grow into a member of the world.

Would like to see them try. Would be better for them and us.

Paul

Political corruption is so ingrained in Africa that they'll probably never be able to support a conventional economy. As soon as outsiders come in and make some progress in productivity, the government "nationalizes" the farms, runs them into the ground (no pun intended), then makes them available to outside investors to get them going again, and the cycle goes on.

It always seems odd to me that no other industries information is available to the public like farming is. The government knows how much you plant, expected yields, prices, the whole ball of wax. Plus the public does as well for some things. No one knows that kind of information on John Deere, GM, Ford, Walmart etc...

(quoted from post at 14:50:32 03/30/16) It always seems odd to me that no other industries information is available to the public like farming is. The government knows how much you plant, expected yields, prices, the whole ball of wax. Plus the public does as well for some things. No one knows that kind of information on John Deere, GM, Ford, Walmart etc...

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I think the cost data is pretty easy to get, and sales and expected profits are certainly public knowledge. And the government knows everything, courtesy of the IRS!

Spook- Plus, the prospectus of any publicly traded company is full of all the info for that
company.

Political corruption is ingrained around the world, including the U.S.A.

I'm going to play the devils advocate here. Anytime someone starts promoting organic farming the first argument from the conventional guys is...but the world will starve to death if we all go organic...That article sure does not make a case for that statement.

The scenario where someone plants a money losing crop in order to generate cash flow is a consequence of crushing debt, any farmer who has maintained moderate growth financed by his own capital the last 10 years or so has many options and will find a crop or a use for his land and capital to make money, in other words, he has options where the slave to the bank does not. The exact same thing has happened in any number of industries over the last 40 years, the most glaring current examples are the shale oil and gas producers, they drilled themselves out of adequate cash flow to service debt and now a large percentage will go under, the underlying assets of the oil fields they developed will be massively written down to true economic value.

LAA- Good analogy!

Thanks

(quoted from post at 21:23:24 03/30/16) LAA- Good analogy!

Thanks

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Gotta agree!

Rick

(quoted from post at 00:10:02 03/31/16) The scenario where someone plants a money losing crop in order to generate cash flow is a consequence of crushing debt, any farmer who has maintained moderate growth financed by his own capital the last 10 years or so has many options and will find a crop or a use for his land and capital to make money, in other words, he has options where the slave to the bank does not. The exact same thing has happened in any number of industries over the last 40 years, the most glaring current examples are the shale oil and gas producers, they drilled themselves out of adequate cash flow to service debt and now a large percentage will go under, the underlying assets of the oil fields they developed will be massively written down to true economic value.

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100% agree... Maybe you do, or you don't understand just exactly what that means to a shale gas boom town, and land owner's who thought they could retire. Best Analogy Online Ever.

Seeing the boom happen from start to finish, and seeing what happens when people get used to the money, and then it dries up... Well, it is brutally painful. It doesn't affect just one or a few in a town, it affects everyone and it is sad.

Sounds like cotton growing in the South at various times, like the late 1800s. One difference, however, was that many cotton farmers were small family farms and they didn't go into debt if they could avoid it. Another difference was that they didn't have big equipment costs. A mule, plows, hoes, a planter, and a wagon to haul cotton to a gin was about it. It helped to have a large family for labor. I'm basically describing my grandfather, who also rented land because he didn't want to go into debt to buy land. Presently I suspect there are some farmers who resisted the temptation to buy lots of new machinery, they should be in a somewhat better situation.

KEH

Wow, dead on; I live in PA and have seen the shale boom come and go in this area in the last 5 years. Saw lots of farmers use their gas money to pay down debt, make improvements to the homeplace, buy land, or start a trust for their kids. I've also seen guys who blew it as fast as they made it on new combines and 200 h.p. tractors and it's them I have no sympathy for now that the money faucet is off. I'd also like to add that economically, what we're dealing with here is the downside to what most of our farms have become - non-diversified producers only capable of growing one or two different crops, subsidized by banks and the american taxpayer and when those crops fail to be profitable, they don't know what else to do but keep on plantin' corn and beans. Sounds harsh I guess, and lots of guys don't want to hear it but it's true.

A quote from the article that just kills me: "With few appealing options, David Seil chose to expand corn planting on his 1,300-acre farm near Gowrie, Iowa. Rather than sacrifice productive land by using it as pasture for his cattle, he?s cutting back on spending for seed and fertilizer and hoping that weather damages crops somewhere else so that prices go up. The arrival of La Nina weather patterns may increase the drought risk in the Midwest, and the government is forecasting higher temperatures this year."

Sacrifice productive land to make more cow pasture??????? SACRIFICE????? Dumbest sentiment I've ever read. Productive pasture land with good cattle or sheep on it will give him more profit per acre than any cornfield he'll grow in the next several years. So, in his mind rather than make a change in his operation, it would be better to EXPAND on a crop he KNOWS he'll lose money on before it even goes in the ground, cut back on seed and fertilizer, grow a half-fast crop of corn, and hope for a disaster somewhere else in the world to make the price go up!!?? Jeez. It's exactly this kind of backwards thinking that has guys up to their a@@ in debt and up to their ears in a crop they can't sell. AND it's the reason that this guy will probably be having an auction sometime in the next decade.

If all this is true then why are futures going up daily for beans? Pushing the 9.25 mark hard.