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Midwest corn farmer on planting season: 'Disaster like I've never seen before' Login/Join 
Staring back
from the abyss
Picture of Gustofer
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Ahhh...no worries fellas. Us taxpayers will bail them out.


________________________________________________________
"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton.
 
Posts: 21060 | Location: Montana | Registered: November 01, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I can't tell if I'm
tired, or just lazy
Picture of ggile
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quote:
Originally posted by Gustofer:
Ahhh...no worries fellas. Us taxpayers will bail them out.


Ain't that the truth!!


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Posts: 2116 | Location: South Dakota-pheasant country | Registered: June 20, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Ammoholic
Picture of Skins2881
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quote:
Originally posted by tatortodd:
quote:
Originally posted by bigdeal:
How about this for a practical, common sense solution politicians will never consider. How about we simply pump and refine more oil and forego the addition of ethanol to gasoline until some point in the future where corn production rebounds to acceptable levels? Using a food item in gasoline production is stupid, but using it in fuel production when its in very short supply, whereby creating all sorts of other negative impacts to multiple markets, is insane.
One stroke of the pen is all it takes and it's been done before (usually regionally though)

Brazil has had the ability many years to swing the percentage of ethanol in gasoline depending on the price of sugar cane and the price of crude oil.


Maybe we can just enjoy some creamed gasoline or gasoline on a cob? Burning our food has never made sense to me. If they were burning it to stabilize prices that might be one thing, or if it was better for the environment, or if it didn't ruin fuel injectors and carbs. Why the hell are we burning our food again?



Jesse

Sic Semper Tyrannis
 
Posts: 21358 | Location: Loudoun County, Virginia | Registered: December 27, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Drill Here, Drill Now
Picture of tatortodd
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Skins2881:
quote:
Originally posted by tatortodd:
quote:
Originally posted by bigdeal:
How about this for a practical, common sense solution politicians will never consider. How about we simply pump and refine more oil and forego the addition of ethanol to gasoline until some point in the future where corn production rebounds to acceptable levels? Using a food item in gasoline production is stupid, but using it in fuel production when its in very short supply, whereby creating all sorts of other negative impacts to multiple markets, is insane.
One stroke of the pen is all it takes and it's been done before (usually regionally though)

Brazil has had the ability many years to swing the percentage of ethanol in gasoline depending on the price of sugar cane and the price of crude oil.


Maybe we can just enjoy some creamed gasoline or gasoline on a cob? Burning our food has never made sense to me. If they were burning it to stabilize prices that might be one thing, or if it was better for the environment, or if it didn't ruin fuel injectors and carbs. Why the hell are we burning our food again?
Trying to find common sense in government regulations is a fool's errand. Call your Congressional Critters and ask them to write legislation suspending ethanol in gasoline until Sept 2020.

It can be suspended in state of emergency, but I'm uncertain how long can be in effect since past ones were usual to make-up for outages in areas requiring r-bob (i.e. they allowed non-ethanol gasoline to be sold in the area during the upset).



Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.
 
Posts: 24026 | Location: Northern Suburbs of Houston | Registered: November 14, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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The floods are a setback but the farmers will be back next year better than ever. Most have crop insurance to cover much of their losses. I expect some disaster relief the same as if we were hit on the coast by a hurricane.

I grew up in a major corn producing area where most of my family was involved in corn and livestock production. When I was a lad on the farm in the Midwest, if we got more than 60-70 bushel of corn per acre we had a great year. Even then, the U.S. was producing far more feedstock than the world could use and corn prices were depressed due to surplus. Corn production methods and hybrids have improved to the point that the average yield is 175 bushels per acre, with some farms producing as much as 300. There are not enough humans and livestock on the planet to eat all that corn. (By the way, dried distiller grains are used as supplements in livestock feed).

If you drive through the Midwest most years during the corn harvest you will see mountains of corn piled on the ground awaiting transport because there is no storage space for all of it. That increase in production numbers is driven by the demand for ethanol. That is a good thing for farmers-the biofuels boom is the first time in my lifetime that farmers have enjoyed a decent income. The same guys who are growing corn for ethanol are also growing wheat, soybeans, pork, beef, chickens, and various other crops, and providing tremendous ancillary feed sources to wildlife. And of course they are feeding corn to their livestock.

Henry Ford in the 1920's advocated the use of biofuels in automobiles and his Model T was designed to use alcohol as well as fossil fuels. A practical consideration was that fuel distribution in rural areas was not reliable but you could distill your own fuel and keep your machines running. When I was a kid you could find an old still in a lot of old barns. Ford saw biofuels as the fuel of the future back in the 20's for a number of reasons, including it being cheaper and cleaner burning than gasoline and that is was available to everyone and renewable. Ford also believed your engine stayed cleaner and lasted longer with ethanol. The ethanol industry was destroyed by prohibition. Some conspiracy theorists suggest prohibition was encouraged by big oil as a way of killing ethanol but I think it was just easier to pump oil out of the ground than to grow and distil it. Major scientific and economic interest in biofuels was stimulated by the fuel crisis of the 70's along with concerns for the environment and dependence on foreign oil.

Fully 10% of gasoline in the US is ethanol. We are once again the world's largest exporter of oil. The economic impact of ethanol is profound, and a large segment of the population (farmers and ethanol producers) get to share in the wealth rather than leaving it all to big oil. Some believe the future of ethanol is cellulose which will replace feedstock grains. We have already seen some work being done with pine tree trash, and sugar cane is a well established source of ethanol. We are in the driver's seat with ethanol production because we have the land and the ability to produce unlimited quantities of biomass. Whatever happens with corn production this year, ethanol is here to stay and is going to play an even more prominent role in fuels in the future.


CMSGT USAF (Retired)
Chief of Police (Retired)
 
Posts: 4382 | Location: Florida Panhandle | Registered: September 27, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
We gonna get some
oojima in this house!
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Ethanol is energy negative and is in place as a subsidy and stabilizer for us corn production. As in, for every 10 BTU of energy derived from corn, it takes 11-13 BTU of petro to produce it.


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TCB all the time...
 
Posts: 6501 | Location: Cantonment/Perdido Key, Florida | Registered: September 28, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of HayesGreener
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quote:
Originally posted by smithnsig:
Ethanol is energy negative and is in place as a subsidy and stabilizer for us corn production. As in, for every 10 BTU of energy derived from corn, it takes 11-13 BTU of petro to produce it.



With respect, that data is more than 20 years out of date. Advances in production and technology has made Corn ethanol become energy positive.


CMSGT USAF (Retired)
Chief of Police (Retired)
 
Posts: 4382 | Location: Florida Panhandle | Registered: September 27, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Still finding my way
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Ethanol is like water in your whiskey. Just a way for the bar to make a bigger profit. It does NOTHING to reduce emissions.
 
Posts: 10851 | Registered: January 04, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
quarter MOA visionary
Picture of smschulz
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quote:
Originally posted by Ryanp225:
Ethanol is like water in your whiskey. Just a way for the bar to make a bigger profit. It does NOTHING to reduce emissions.

Actually a few drops of water releases aroma and opens up whisky (no "E"). Cool
FWIW, drink prices in bars are not moved by the amount of water in the cocktail. Confused
 
Posts: 23454 | Location: Houston, TX | Registered: June 11, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by HayesGreener:
quote:
Originally posted by smithnsig:
Ethanol is energy negative and is in place as a subsidy and stabilizer for us corn production. As in, for every 10 BTU of energy derived from corn, it takes 11-13 BTU of petro to produce it.



With respect, that data is more than 20 years out of date. Advances in production and technology has made Corn ethanol become energy positive.
. Are you in the hay business? Thanks
 
Posts: 2714 | Registered: March 22, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of HayesGreener
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quote:
Originally posted by midwest guy:
quote:
Originally posted by HayesGreener:
quote:
Originally posted by smithnsig:
Ethanol is energy negative and is in place as a subsidy and stabilizer for us corn production. As in, for every 10 BTU of energy derived from corn, it takes 11-13 BTU of petro to produce it.



With respect, that data is more than 20 years out of date. Advances in production and technology has made Corn ethanol become energy positive.
. Are you in the hay business? Thanks


I was-retired from that when the cost of diesel and fertilizer went through the roof


CMSGT USAF (Retired)
Chief of Police (Retired)
 
Posts: 4382 | Location: Florida Panhandle | Registered: September 27, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Get my pies
outta the oven!

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Oh man, this is BAD. They are now saying this may be one of the worst crop failures the United States has ever seen. Eek

From Zero Hedge:

quote:


Shocking Before & After Photos Reveal Awful Truth About Widespread US Crop Failures In 2019

Torrential rains have been hammering the heartland of America for months, and at this point vast stretches of farmland in the middle of the country are nothing but mud. As a result of the endless rain and unprecedented flooding that we have witnessed, millions of acres of farmland will have nothing planted on them at all in 2019, and that is a major national crisis. But most farmers were able to get seeds planted in the deplorable conditions, and now they are desperately hoping that something will actually grow. Unfortunately, on farm after farm what is coming out of the ground looks absolutely terrible. Even if we get ideal weather conditions for the rest of the summer, there is no way that many of these fields will be ready before the first hard frost arrives. As you will see below, the truth is that we are potentially facing the most widespread crop failures in all of U.S. history.

This is the biggest news story in America so far this year, and the mainstream media is finally starting to understand the gravity of what we are facing. Just consider the following quote from a recent Quartz article…

The stories across the Midwest are wrenching. Scrolling through the #NoPlant19 hashtag turns up dozens of posts about farmers staring out at soggy fields or farm equipment foundering in deep mud. It’s likely many will see their harvests devastated this year, and global grain prices could spike.

But of course a picture is worth a thousand words, and so let me share a before and after photo that a farming couple in Indiana named Kyle and Tori Kline recently shared on Facebook...



According to Tori, the corn was almost above Kyle’s head at this time last year, but today it is barely out of the ground…

“These two pictures speaks volumes to the crisis American Farmers are facing this spring. Kyle is about 6’3” and the corn was nearly above his head. Most corn around our area is lucky to be out of the ground, let alone knee high. It’s just some food for thought for those who think farmers are “rich” or “greedy” or what have you. It’s the reason food and gas prices will be getting higher as the summer goes on. I pray for those who didn’t or still haven’t gotten their crops in – for their safety and mental health. This year will be one to remember.”

Do you think that corn is going to be ready when harvest time rolls around?

And of course the Klines are far from alone. All over the nation, farmers are facing either dramatically reduced yields or no harvest at all.



Peter Bergkamp
@pbergkamp791
Follow Follow @pbergkamp791

Accurate picture of how the spring of 2019 has been so far. (Yes, that is a turtle swimming in the corn)

Let me share four more extremely disturbing before and after photos that were recently posted to Facebook by TD Hale…










We have never seen anything like this before.

Now that you have seen these pictures, are you starting to understand why so many of us have been warning that U.S. agricultural production is going to be way, way down this year?

Corn is not supposed to grow in mud, but due to the horrific weather conditions many farmers in the middle of the country had absolutely no choice in the matter. For example, corn farmer Scott Labig confessed that he was “ashamed” of what the nightmarish weather conditions forced him to do…

Labig was doing something he had never done in his career. Something his father and his grandfather never did either in their time working this same land for the last century.

“I am ashamed of how I am planting corn today,” Labig told Campbell on the phone. “This is terrible.”

He was putting seeds into mud. How could things actually grow in this mess?


If you do not live in the middle of the country, you may have a difficult time grasping the true scope of what we are potentially facing.

If farmers do not grow our food, we do not eat. This is not a drill, and widespread crop failures are going to have dramatic implications for all of us in the months ahead. Food prices are going much higher, and I urge you to get prepared while you still can.

According to John Newton, the chief economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, we have never faced “anything like this since I’ve been working in agriculture”. We are truly in unprecedented territory already, and it won’t take very much at all to turn 2019 into a complete and utter national catastrophe.

If the weather is absolutely perfect for the next few months, 2019 will still be a horrible, horrible year for farmers in the middle of the country.

But if the rain doesn’t stop, or if there is too much heat, or if a very early hard frost happens, we could be facing a national nightmare that is beyond what most of us would even dare to imagine.

And guess what? Over the weekend the middle of the country was pounded by even more severe storms…

Hundreds of people were without power in Missouri and Kansason Sunday as storms ripped through the area, prompting officials to warn drivers to remain off the roads as flash flood warnings were in effect.

Until 8:45 a.m. central time, a flash flood warning was in effect in Missouri’s Trenton, Bethany and Gallatin cities, according to the National Weather Service, while such warnings were in effect until 8:30 a.m. central time in Saint Joseph, Atchison and Savannah.


Just when you think that this crisis cannot possibly get any worse, it does.

Please share this article with your family, friends and those that you care about. People need to understand what is going on out there.

We are literally watching a massive national crisis unfold right in front of our eyes, and I will do my best to continue to keep you updated.


Link


 
Posts: 35257 | Location: Pennsylvania | Registered: November 12, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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No of our ground has been planted yet. The trickle down will be considerable in local economies. The equipment dealers won't be selling parts. Their service departments won't be billing labor hours. If you do have a good corn field every deer in the township will find it. Not gonna be a good year for the average farmer in Ohio anyway.


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