Imagine my surprise! I got in two hours time-on-task today.
It wasn't pulling weeds, though. It was lugging water (38 minutes) with the remainder being cutting wood, loading it into a wheelbarrow and wheeling it to the pile that goes to the guy whose property adjoins the Upper Orchard and who heats with wood. The orchard floor is still a mess and clearing it will make it easier to maintain.
While some of the chunks were substantial, the dead-lifting I have been doing made the physical handling of the wood not-that-bad.
Drought and the price of food
The price that a farmer gets for the amount of wheat that goes into a loaf of bread is less than the cost of the printed, plastic bag that the baker packages the loaf of bread in.
And bread is not typically thought of as a highly processed food. What that means from a practical standpoint is that the price of wheat could double and if nobody in the value-chain took advantage of the excuse, the price of a loaf of bread might increase by five or ten cents.
On the other hand, eggs, beef, pork and chicken are very sensitive to the price of grain because grain is a larger percentage of the cost-per-pound.
Hogs are efficient converters of feed. The last 200 pounds of gain for a 240 pound hog is about 650 pounds of "concentrate", i.e. grain, soymeal, brewer's waste and pedophiles. That 650 pounds of concentrate coverts to about 120 pounds of boneless meat.
The retail price of that concentrate at a "farm store" is about $45/100 pounds or about $2.40 per pound of meat.
Of course, the commercial producers don't pay that much per 100 pounds of feed. They don't by the fancy bags with the pretty pictures on them. But as a home producer, you can get a feel for how sensitive the price of meat is to the price of grain.
Yes, I know that somebody is ALWAYS crying out doom-and-gloom regarding food prices. This year is no exception. Some parts of the corn-belt are in drought status right now. That is a big deal because the soil moisture levels shortly after the corn "tassels" determines how many kernels on each ear are pollinated and that sets an upper limit on the amount of corn that will be harvested, even if abundant rains come afterward.
What if Congress could increase the corn crop by 50%?
Sounds like a stupid question, right? Keep an open mind.
Approximately 35% of the United States corn crop is diverted to ethanol production which is used to adulterate gasoline. Federal law allows gasoline to contain up to 10% ethanol. Various reasons have been given for the practice but in real-politiks it is a backdoor price support for corn producers and it increases the profit margins for the gas-wholesalers. The net increase in energy is virtually nill.
In a rational world, Congress (or the POTUS) would be watching the food market-basket like a hawk and have a series of trigger-points. When the cost of the market-basket punched upward through a trigger-point, the amount of ethanol allowed in motor-fuel would be reduced by some amount...perhaps two percent. Then if it punched through the next trigger-point, reduced by another two percent.
If such a plan was devised (and shared with the industry ahead of time), they could make rational plans regarding the economically rational way to moth-ball marginal ethanol plants with minimal collateral damages.
From the standpoint of the corn producer, if prices are extremely high, then the need for price-supports is not a strong argument.
For the hair-splitters
If 65% of the corn crop is currently used for food, then increasing the amount to 100% is a net increase of 100%/65%. The basis (denominator) should not be the total but the fraction of the total that is currently employed for that purpose.
That is not a 35% increase over current levels. It is a 50% increase.
Ethanol is not "allowed" in fuel, but rather required by the EPA as it is an oxygenator.
ReplyDeleteI read that too. That would be an Executive Branch call.
DeleteRemember, the EPA "determined" that CO2 is an existential threat to life on earth. The radical elements in the EPA would make it illegal for you to exhale.
The dials could be twisted from either the Executive Branch side or the Legislative side.
THis is probably as good of a place as any to point out that the food industry will point out that the most expensive part of animal feed is the protein and distiller's waste has almost all of the protein that the original grain did.
In point-of-fact, the mothballed ethanol plants could CREATE protein in their fermentation vats by adding urea to the carbs and the bloom of yeast would produce more animal-usable protein than the original corn. That all comes down to economics.
Carbs make fat and flavor. Protein makes lean. If you are starving to death, you need fat.