5 dollar corn aint it funny

Seen this bullshoot 3 times at least in my lifetime. Farmers will never be allowed to make much more than a living in this country.
5 dollar corn is now what a buck 80 corn was a short time ago REMEMBER?
300 plus for a bag of corn. What a joke. Guess I will not feel too bad burning my corn up in my corn heater.
Anyone else got any thoughts on this.

Have a nice night

Farmer

Yep, you got it just about right.

My brother works at Soutern States. They have not got a price locked in for fall/winter pre sale on anything yet. They are tell'n people that NH3 is looking to be in the $1000-$1300 range for winter pre sale! We are going to have to have alot more days like today with limit up across the board (and stay there) for me to be able to put out much of a corn crop this next year.

Dave

I sympathize with you but from a livestock mans view, I can't pay $7 a bu for corn. I feed over 100K bu a year in corn and about 700 tons of soybean meal. We are cutting back on our broilers because we are getting the same as we were in 1995. My cattle are going to be grass fed and my numbers are being cut in half. We have high inputs in fuel also but the price of grain is worse for us. It looks like time to sharpen the pencil. It's a cycle, when the grain farmer makes money the livstock suffers. Usually it cycles back and the profits reverse. However this time things are a little different, the demand for grass fed beef is increasing and who knows what will happen in the poultry industry.

I think its because we buy our imputs at the retail level and sell our outputs at the wholesale level. Oppisite of most other businesses. I don't have any answers, just a thought.

You should be feeding cattle with it not funny at all

You can thank the ethanol boondoggle for the inflated price of corn.

You better come up with some hard facts to back up your "ethanol boondoggle" statement

Looked at next week's contract for corn to the pet food plant I work at. 100 tons at $7.60 per bu. This is in New York. Corn prices are almost at the point that they have passed fuel oil in cost for BTU dollar. I've advised everybody I work with that still field farms to concentrate on their hay production and forget corn. Ethanol will indeed be a boondoggle especially once everybody realizes the long term effect it will have on vehicles.
Hay will be in demand this year.

I have to admit I'm baffled by the stagnant cattle, hog, and poultry prices. I understand that cattle is a slow cycle because production is such a slow process, but why are hog and poultry prices flat? I mean, they're eating the same $7 corn. And for cattle, the hay price sure as heck keeps in line with fuel prices, but the cattle prices stay low.

The only sense I can make out of it is that meat is becoming a luxury item for the average consumer. More so every day.

I run a small beef operation because I enjoy it. I take a small profit since I consider my labor free. However, it's approaching a point where I not only have to donate labor, but donate fuel as well just to keep the operation running.

s.crum here is something to look at. Corn is about $270/ton according to your price. Corn is about 90% TDN meaning a ton of corn has 1800lbs of nutrients. Divide $270 by 1800 you pay about $.15/lb of nutrients. Hay I would say is about $225/ton on average depending on what you get and is about 60% TDN or 1200 lbs of nutrients. $225 divided by 1200lbs is $.1875/lb of nutrients. As you can see corn still gives more nutrients for your money even at $7.60/ bushel. Hay would have to be $180/ton or less to match corns amount of nutrients for you dollar. Granted you would have to add a protein, Ca and P supplements since corn is defficient. But hay is lower in energy, less palatable, less digestible, often times some of it is wasted, and corn would probably still be fed with hay to meet nutrient requirements.

I feed my cattle on Hay and pasture grass with a little alfalfa to fatten them up. I get about $.80 top at the auction if I had to buy my feed I would be out of the cattle business real fast. I get the highest prices for my cattle at the auction.
Walt

That's what I think, corn is at an artificially inflated price because of the ethanol boondoggle. The gov is subsidizing the growers ethanol and the consumer is too.

factor in the cost of planting that lb of nutrients and i think you'd get much different results.

Yep,,,,,

I just got the last of my bill last week. Added'm all up. Count'n up JUST seed, spray, and fertilize figures to just under $400/acre. If I was out that a year on hay and pasture ground, me and the ol' mommas would have to have a long talk and they would see what then of my road looks like for the first time on thier way to town.

Dave

Farmer-
I think most that posted below have missed the point of your posting. $5 is too CHEAP at current conditions, $5 is not inflated. Maybe my comment will stir the "boondoglers". But most Im sure will not have any current real world experience to base their uneducated opinions.
Matt

s.crum said

Ethanol will indeed be a boondoggle especially once everybody realizes the long term effect it will have on vehicles.

I as well as millions of other midwesterners have been burning ethanol for 30 years. It has not hurt our vehicles at all.

Ethanol is new to some areas but not here.

We burnt ethanol in early 70's model cars that were not even designed for it without any problems. We also burn it in our gas tractors.


Gary

I quit feeding grain to my cattle and meat goats about 5 years ago and they are much healthier for the switch to all forage.Grain lowers the Ph in the rumen and makes ruminants more likely to have health problems.

Sorry I was just looking at it as a livestock producer buying it and not growing my own feed since that is the situation I am in.

Grain farmers need to blame themselves for the price drop because of overproduction.Grain farmers ignore basic economics by constantly over producing and being suckers to believe the BS coming from the USDA.

I think that the point was well taken and considering the cost of fuel and fertilizer, $5 probably is too low. But from my point of view considering the input costs $7 is too high. There is always at least 2 sides to every story and it is good to try to see all sides. I'll try to do better also. :>))

I see what you mean about only making very little.Also seeing the other answers shows why its happening.If it werent for ethanol the price of everything would go up as it has,and you still would get 1 eighty a bushel for corn.

The way to fix it is the CBOT.Force congress to do something about it or it will never change.

Dumb people will stay dumb,and not see the problem.If they dont like ethanol,I say pay them 1 eighty for their corn.

Don't feel bad. The correction is coming. Wait until you have these input costs next year, or worse... and probably half the price for the corn.
It's just another cycle. There won't be many that will make money from the cycle because they're too busy paying big rent for land that they can only make a pittance on to begin with, and then going in debt to their ears to buy equipment at the top of the market... with the appropriate payments for the next 5 years on that gear.
Give it 18 months and there's going to be people singing a far different tune.
For this, you can thank ethanol... an industry itself that only seems to exist for the subsidies it can collect. If congress or a new pres decides that it's time to make it stand on it's own two feet, that will collapse too. It may collapse anyway now that energy prices are falling. It was all going grat when oil was rising and leading the price. Now that oil is falling, the rest will follow it down. Naturally, the farmer that paid the big dollars to get in when it was going big is going to pay the price when it's going down...

Rod

You left out the part about trade boards keeping the price artificially low,and stealing from farmers.

What irritates me is a certain big corn/bean farmer, that was complaining the other day about grocery prices and what a side of beef cost him from a local grower, and then with a slight pause continued to say he wants to see $8 corn. What does he think beef and groceries grow off fairy dust?? I think input costs will stay where they are for a few years, even though oil has dropped a bunch I really don"t see gas or diesel dropping below $3.50. As stated seed prices are high, I am gonna try and purchase mine in Dec and get that 10% early cash purchase price. Fertilizer, well, I am going to utilize the local Soil and water office and U of MN to get the most of my chicken and cow manure. I am hoping there will be a way to save,spread and incorporate some chicken manure when I normally would be spreading urea. I beleive the EQIP program is still open a,d I possibly can get $30-40/ acre payments with some changes in practices. I am just glad I do not have huge equipment payments to make, but then I am not farming huge acres.

Well we've been buying retail and selling wholesale for 60 years. If everybody would have cut production 10-15 percent over the last couple of years and not ran out and bidd twice what land is worth for rent and purchase it would be good for a long time. Now it will be interesting to see how the government is called on to save farming just like in the 80's. Willey better get a lot of farm aid out because the blues are just about to be sang.

Here's my 2 cents.
Corn never should have been $7. That was just a bunch of guys trading paper in chicago.
I believe grain farmers can prosper on $5 corn if inputs level off at this point.
The increase in the price of farm commodities has very very very little to do with the increase in food prices at the store.
Ethanol is neither a boondoogle nor a cure all but a stepping stone on the path to alternative energy.
Ethanol hasnt caused prices to go up nearly as much as the cheap dollar has driven demand for our products world wide.
The amazing increase in input prices makes me shake my head but once again, worldwide demand is ever increasing. This has been caused by high grain prices and the weak dollar.
Grain farming is profitable at this level but it would be nice to see inputs and commidities level out. The biggest thing is remeber to be careful spending money you dont have and get your inputs bought early. I have a spreadsheet I run input/expense's against revenues and some of those big rent guys are headed to a disaster allready.
Of course all of this being said I have bins full of corn that isnt priced so I'm a genius.
bill

I have used the 10% blend for years (25) without any problems. Gas tractors, Gas 715 combine, gas F Gleaner, Versatile 400 swather, and several cars and trucks.

i'm a dairy farmer and not very happy about feed prices, but even more unhappy about the direction milk futures are heading (way south). my point is that even though corn has more energy per acre than hay, hay isn't that bad a deal when you factor input costs in. a lot of people are facing dire situations because of high rents (self inflicted for the most part), and high seed/fert/equipment costs.
most of the runup in corn prices happened due to people that don't get their hands dirty, just sit at a desk and play with other people's money. they wouldn't know what to do if 10 carloads of corn actually showed up on their doorstep and neede to be unloaded.

Speaking of ethanol, the July issue of Auto Body Repair News had an absorbing and alarming article about ethanol from a standpoint of putting out vehicle fires involving E-85 fuel. I'm sure most big city fire departments have a handle on this, or maybe not, but probably very few small town volunteer departments do.

A wake-up call occurred when a couple of tankers carrying ethanol were involved in accidents causing the ethanol to catch fire---and no one could put the fire out.

The problem is, ethanol is water soluble. Tests have shown that when E-85 is diluted 5 to 1 with water, it's still flammable. In other words, if you have a fire involving 1 gallon of ethanol and you spray it with 5 gallons of water, you've created an escalating fire containing six gallons of flammable liquid.

So, when a fire department is called to a vehicle fire, and they try to extinguish it with current water based retardents, they escalate the fire instead of retarding it. For openers, how do firemen know what a car is carrying for fuel? If it's E-85 certified, that doesn't mean it's carrying E-85. And you can't rule out the possibility of some dork putting E-85 into a non-E-85 vehicle.

The only sure way to know what a vehicle is carrying for fuel is to interview the last person to fuel it. And that person may now be trapped in a vehicle in a now escalating fire.

Besides being water soluble, ethanol also attacks the bubbles in the foam used on conventional fires, rendering the foam useless. There are new chemicals being developed that are effective against ethanol fires, but they are still in short supply and priced beyond your typical small town volunteer fire department.

The article in ABRN was written from the standpoint of body shops being alert to fire hazards caused by leaks caused gasket failure from people putting E-85 fuel in non-E-85 vehicles, but there is the same potential hazard wherever ethanol is present.

Interesting can of worms, isn't it?

You got it, Bill.

--->Paul

I am a farmer in Iowa and I believe that ethanol is ruining this country. I even had to quit farm bureu because you are not aloud to be against there views on things. Why would you take the worlds food supply and make fuel out of it? There are alot of other things to make fuel out of. I will not even buy fuel containing ethanol. Just my opinion on that topic.

I am a farmer in Iowa and I believe that ethanol is ruining this country. I even had to quit farm bureu because you are not aloud to be against there views on things. Why would you take the worlds food supply and make fuel out of it? There are alot of other things to make fuel out of. I will not even buy fuel containing ethanol. Just my opinion on that topic.

You are absoutly right Bill. Corn is being traded the same as oil. Speculators panic buying for fear of the market being short. The extra acres put into corn more than makes up for the extra use, and probably then some. But people that wouldn"t know a corn plant from a sunflower are the ones that are making this happen.

Even the corn farmer does not seem to be in any hurry to convert from diesel powered units to burn the wonderful corn ethanol products. Ya got to question why, when a person will not eat their own cooking.

Wow, I never would have thought about that aspect of E85 on my own, but you are right on each of those accounts. It's like the hazards created by hybrid vehicles for rescue workers. I'll keep my '96 dodge pickup thank you very much.

Bill, thanks for a concise and well reasoned comment on the situation. The biggest problem we are facing right now is changing economics that won't let us lock in a budget or strategy to purchase inputs and market our crops.

I agree with everyone that most of the negative press and comments are ill informed. Give me $5 and $9 beans. Decide on a price for inputs that isn't going to change every 2 weeks and I'll figure out how to make it work. Until that time I will sharpen my pencil and try to hit a moving target.

A lot of people complaining about ethanal. People seem to forget what started the ethanal - the high price of oil. At least with ethanal the money stays in the U.S. instead of going to nations disliking the U.S. And people are against nuclear power, more coal plants, and more drilling. We have become a country of not doing anything when it comes to alternate energy. And we will be doomed to be a second rate nation if we don't get on the ball for additional energy. I believe corn ethanal is probably an interium step for energy alternatives. But I am tired of cry babies criticising every type of alternate energy sources.
We'd better quit complaining and start doing.

Actually, from every single story that I've read about ethanol plants that were started, them seed that started them was always the low price of corn and a desire to create a USE for the corn that would be more profitable. It had nothing to do with the demand for energy. In fact, there are a couple of people/businesses interested in starting beet ethanol plants in this area, and none will actually do the deed until the government will guarnantee them a market with the oil companies. Seems to me that if energy demand was leading this cycle, the oil companies would be jumping at the oppertunity to get hold of this cheap ethanol.

The actual science that I've read suggests that there's a good deal more energy goes into producing ethanol that what is contained in the actual ethanol... so to me, that's just like a dog chasing his tail. When you're using more to make it than you take from it, you're going backwards... otherwise known as accelerating the use of fossil energy.
One can argue the different studies out there on this subject, and debate the criteria and methods they use to form their conclusions... That can be debated.

However, one should think about one thing. Our entire system of agriculture for the past 60 years or more has been built on fossil fuels. The productivity gains, yeild gains and so on have mostly come as the result of the use of chemicals and technology derived from oil. Given that you can't get more energy OUT of a system than you've put INTO the system, I'd think that's it's fairly logical to assume that ethanol is probably at best breaking even and at worst accelerating our problem, perhaps greatly.
I think if more people started looking at facts instead of making emotional arguements and preaching their desire to be clear of arab oil, they might see things the way I do...

Rod

There are a lot of things wrong at the present time.Ethanol and other alternative forms of energy are here to stay.Ethanol does not have to be made out of corn either.They are hard on the trail of making it out of switchgrass.However,if its not that,I dont see why they dont make it out of sugar cane.Maybe sugar cane can be grown farther north if we only make ethanol out of it.Sugar cane is the stuff to make ethanol out of,it makes 8 times the energy where corn only makes 1 1/2 times the energy it takes to produce the ethanol.The thing to do is find something,maybe not corn,but corn for now,and make ethanol.

The other thing is that commodities and oil should not be allowed in a speculative market,which calls future stocks real,so they(speculators)can say theres a shortage on oil and other commodities thats not been pumped out of the ground yet.Thats the big problem.

The rest will stir up lots of people,so I hesitate to say it.Its true though.Every time there is a "nnalert"administration,they sort of make it hard on working people.The definition for working people even changes under a nnalert way of looking at things to where there are very few people except the rich who actually benefit much from thier leadership,if thats what you call it.We always go backwards under the nnalert because thier agenda is to get rid of the inefficient,or dead wood as its called sometimes.They make the big get bigger,the rich get richer,and dont really do a whole lot more than that.If you made any social advances in the previous nnalert administration they try and undermine that,or just plain get rid of it.

nnalert dont really do much more than tax the heck out of everything to pay for the next wave of social crap they get elected for proposing.Some of this is usually not ever going to even get passed by nnalert either,but they will tell you this stuff to vote for them.It was at one time,in most of the country,that it was run by nnalert,until they got about as corrupt as the nnalert,So now we have Communist.No Choice.

Niether side is going to do much of anything for working people.nnalert not at all.nnalert very little.

We just had 8 years of some of the worst that have ever been in office under any name.What you better hope just as much as whether you can plant next year is,how much longer can we as a country put up with this nonsense.

5 dollar corn is not funny in lots of ways,and the foreign policy part of it might just ruin the whole country,if not other countries,to the point that what we have when its over is not even recognizable any more.

Some paper pushers make way more off of commodities rip offs than farmers ever will.Some of you complaining about ethanol,will read this and still not get it,and want to fight me for saying what I did about nnalert,and you will even know its true,and still do it.

As always I dont even care what you think,so leave this up a while and somebody that maybe can help might see it,And Change Things for you.

Politicians are not going to help working people,even if they are farmers,under nnalert.nnalert dont care about people like you all,but they want your support.nnalert arent going to help you much either unless something you want coinsides with some agenda they have for a minority or something like that.Poor working people dont mean much to them.

You all vote for these people,even if they are nnalert.You can get a bunch of people together and demand that they represent you.I dont know what else you do,other than vote the other side in and see if it helps.

There has to be regulations enforced on the Chicago Board of Trade and all the others,to keep this stuff from happening,and to get fair pay for Farmers.If not,there wont be any change,and lots more farmers will be broke,and the same people that are crying about Ethanol will balme Ethanol for it happening.

It was never Ethanol to start with,but whatever the fools do,take as much advantage of it while you can.If they want to pay 7 dollars a bushel for corn sell it to them if you have some.It would be better if they ran the market like they had some sense,but they run the market.Sell all the 7 dollar corn you can,because next year it wont be that high.You can just about bet on that.If it is,sell them some more,but surely its going to come down.You will be as mad when it comes down to whatever cheating rate they give you,as you claim you are about Ethanol.

Rod, you make some good points about ethanol. Yes there can be a lot of arguments both for and against. I would hope that people remember ethanolalso replaced MTBE a know carcinogen. But what is at stake is a much bigger problem. The amount of money we are spending on oil is the biggest transfer of wealth ever in the history of the world. I believe ethanol will be a part of the solution, it will go from corn to other sources. But we need to start somewhere. It just that every solution to our energy problem is that is being put in a negative light. Just like drilling for oil off shore. The big response from some of our Democratics is that most of this oil won't be available for ten years. What kind of thinking is this? We won't need oil in ten years? We must understand that this energy problem is America's Achilles heel. We can always stop making ethanol from corn, but we can not make more oil, only use up more of a finite resource. I support the people in Congress who say "all the above" when dealing with this problme.

I don't think people are complaining about ethanol, it's the processes of making ethanol. It's not cheap like in other countries. Price of corn and feed has put people out of business. News just had a story on catfish farmers in Mississippi that the high price of feed was putting them out of business. Florida bought out the sugar cane industry in their state to the tune of billions to put it back to swamp.
So, if catfish are raised in the south in the rice fields and Florida bought out the sugar cane industry, why would anybody in their right mind decide corn was a better fuel than sugar cane when almost all the countries that make ethanol use sugar cane and we have areas that are well suited for it?

I agree that the supply of oil is definitely a problem. It's not just america's problem though. It's the problem of everyone that uses oil... from ever single industrialized nation in the americas, Europe, Russia and right on to the far east.
I don't have a problem with drilling for more here, wherever it's located. I also don't have a problem with nuclear power, hydro power or any other kind of power. The way I see it, if we need it we build it.
There's potential for something like another 2200 MW from the lower part of the Churchill River in Labrador that sits as yet undeveloped because of government squabling over transmission rates through other provinces and finding a suitable route for the lines. That project in itself is quite a large block of energy. Fairly low cost, relatively clean energy... I wish they'd go ahead with projects like that.

The problem I see with ethanol, and that's any form of ethanol is that from my perspective it requires more energy to produce than you get from it. From what I've read that can vary anywhere I believe from 130% to 150% of what you will eventually get from it... so if you're using 30-50% more energy to produce ethanol that it returns to you, you're burnig yourself out of oil faster, not slowing the inevitable. I'm by no means an expert on the subject, but when I look at a crop like corn that's highly dependant on nitrogen (derived from natural gas) along with beets and cane, again both highly nitrogen dependant, I wonder how you can pour energy into the crop and still expect to get more energy out...
Look at a crop like beans or canola. Those two are far less dependant on N and I think that by the time you squeeze them for their oil, and run the process, it's still not much better than break even on an energy basis. It's one thing to make oil from beans or canola so long as there's a market for the meal, but once you reach the point where the meal is no longer needed because you've got so much, the energy returns and the economic returns start looking pretty shaky to me...

Again, the general idea I'm using is that oil has been mostly responsible for making agriculture function for the last 60 years. You can't get more energy (oil) out of any system than you put in, agriculture included. Otherwise, Einstein was wrong...

Rod

No kidding on milk. Its amazing how little farmers get and that stores still charge $2.79 a gallon, and thats when its on sale. I wouldn't feel as bad paying that if the farmer got a fair share instead of the processors hogging it all.


We had $16 soybeans here for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if beans drop to $7 or $8 with so many planting them this year.