As to the plight of farmers. Hear about the Irish farmer who won a million pounds in the lottery?
“So, what will you be doing with the money?”
“I reckon I’ll farm until that money’s gone too.”

Peak Oil is here.
Maybe. Maybe not. Your solution: to burn food? How is Peak Food a solution to Peak Oil?

Peak Oil is here. What are cars going to run on as the supply of oil slowly declines? Ethanol is a partial answer for awhile until the energy crunch gets really bad. Then who knows?

I think you pretty well missed my point. Also, I haven’t farmed, but I have ranched. It was tough work, but rewarding. Just like anything else, if it’s not worth it to you, don’t do it.

I may not be your typical farm landlord, but I am one. A man much wealthier than I (a farmer) rents the land from me, and I am glad to take whatever I can get. I would sell him the land, but my two partners (relatives) refuse to go along. You might want to look into what those people will do with their land if you choose not to lease it. We have really no other option as our 80 acres is surrounded by our tenant’s property. No one else would likely want to farm it. I would rent it to him for a dollar just for taking care of it, and keeping it tax exempt.

Back to my original point. You can’t slough the blame without doing something about it. Either you and the other farmers move your political support, or take the blame. If you can’t stand the heat, you can get out of the kitchen.

As I see it, you deserve the blame. I have seen nothing that would lead me to question that, from you, or anyone else. Farm policy in this country, at least as far as I know, is a direct consequence of the influence of farmers.

Let me state that we are a FAMILY FARM. Contrary to popular belief, we still exist. There are more of us than you think.

Now, let me say that many of us do agree that the farm program needs to be overhauled. Yes, there are some that abuse it. It needs to be re-evaluated.

As to no one calling us greedy, we get called that all the time. When fuel prices go up, it’s our fault. When food prices go up, it’s our fault. I just want to get across that we are NOT the source of the problem. Heck, if we break even it’s a good year. We get a chance to maybe make a profit and start to rebuild our infrastructure and we get slammed for taking advantage of ethanol. Heck, we’ve got landlords who have raised our farm rent on some properties by $50 an acre this year just because we are supposedly rolling in dough. At least in our circumstance, it’s simply not true.

As to farmers lobbying Congress and our political pull, well, it’s not as much as you might think. If it were, we’d have a farm plan through congress by now. But we don’t. We hope it comes through soon, but right now we don’t know when.

If you really want to know about how the subsidy and loan program work, may I suggest a trip to your local FSA office? The people there will be more than willing to show you how it works, or in some cases doesn’t.

BTW, if you really want to know what it’s like to farm, I can put your butt in a tractor and have you get callouses on your nether regions for a few months.

When the people of Iowa start telling presidential candidates and other officials that they vote for to stop the ethanol programs, they will end. So, don’t sit around thinking the farmers are getting blamed for nothing. I haven’t seen any anti-ethanol farmer protests. I believe it would make the news if there was one.

Second, I am not too concerned about “family farms”. Mostly because they are mostly gone. ADM does not need subsidies. I don’t really think mutli million dollar businesses are what most people would think of as a “family farm” just because they are privately owned.

Lastly, charge what you want, it won’t bother me. I hear no one calling the farmers greedy over their prices. I hear them calling farmers nasty names because of all the government interference in the food market that we all believe is caused by the farmers themselves.

If this is untrue, then the farmer associations have done a REALLY bad job of PR. As slimy as the pols can be, I somehow don’t believe that all these programs for farmers are unpopular with the farmers. Are the pols lying about why we have to have them (ostensibly because if they don’t support them they will lose their seats).

I don’t hear the pols complaining about pressure from the oil companies and their employees forcing them to vote for oil subsidies. Maybe the farm subsidies are similar?

I do agree that subsidies for the ethanol industry haven’t been well planned. Basically they are throwing money at a system that isn’t as efficient as it could be. There are many other crops that can be used to produce ethanol that are much better suited. I’m not sure who is making the most off of these subsidies either. There are a lot of middlemen who have their hands in that pie. You have the ethanol plants themselves, the electric companies who power them, the rail lines that supply them, the trucking industry that moves the finished product, and so on and so on.

I just get frustrated when the first people to catch blame on this issue are farmers. We are simply doing what we have to to survive. Yeah, we plant what we think will profit, but we also have to take into account what will grow best on the land. It’s a fine line to walk.

What I’m concerned about are subsidies for ethanol. The market currently isn’t very profitable for these operations, yet they survive partly because of these subsidies.

I don’t know if people are blaming farmers directly, they’re pawns in this game as well. I assume they grow what they think will give them the most profit, which makes sense. And labor is cheap these days, so larger farming companies can collect profits while keeping payrolls low.

But the ethanol policy doesn’t seem to be well thought out for all the taxpayer money thrown at it. So who’s making the money off of these subsidies, then (I’m not claiming to know the answer at this point)? If we follow the money, I’m sure we’ll find a route back to the politicians somehow.

I despise single-issue voting, but sometimes one has to make exceptions. Well, let’s make it two issues. I’ll vote for any presidential candidate, and any local federal representation, that will work to kill the corn ethanol as a government program, and commit long term funding for NASA to undertake human exploration of Mars.

Phil

May I clear up a few misguided posts about corn subsidies? I should know, my family farms and I’ve gotten quite an education.

First, GS650G, yes corn prices have gone up. Guess what? So has the cost of farming. You know how much the price of gasoline has risen? Now, multiply that 10fold and you’ll see how much we are simply spending on fuel. And fertilizer, don’t get me started. It will cost appr. $30,000 more this year than last. So yea, we’re getting more per bushel, but the profit margin (if there is one) is the same.

Next, y2kdcar, there is a program called CRP that does pay some to not farm their land. However, the guidlines to get into that program are exceptionally strict, and just about the only people who take advangage of that program are city dwellers who own 20 acres of trees or swamp. Really, the average farmer doesn’t use or need CRP.

And now onto subsidies. I bet that you probably don’t realize that most of what you call “subsidies” is actually government loans. Yup, the kind you have to pay back at the end of the year. In fact, 70 to 80% of what is handed out to farmers are loans to be paid back with interest at the end of the season. Very little is an actual subsidy. Now, it is true that these loans are subsidized, but the fact is we still have to pay it back.

And another thing while I’m on my soapbox, do you know that almost 90% of farmers take out bank loans at the start of the year in order to farm? That’s right, we go to the bank like everyone else and beg for money at an exorbanant interest rate. The federal loans, they account for only 10% of our operating budget. So, on a farm like ours, we take out a $500,000 bank loan at the start of the year, get maybe $50,00 from the government, and have to pay it all back with interest at the end of the year. If we get a crop to sell at all.

And don’t even get me started on contracts…That’s another post entirely.

Oh, and we still don’t have a federal farm program yet, so we may not get anything this year.

So, if you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer, but please STOP blaming farmers for this mess. It’s not our fault.

Agreed. But they HAD campaigned on becoming more fiscally prudent. And farm programs tend to benefit red-state areas – so it may have been in their electoral interest to scale back farm subsidies.

But they’ve thrown out the baby, the cat, the dog, and the bathroom sink with the bathwater. Remember ‘pay-as-you-go’ (which was more like ‘tax-as-you-go’). It gone. And not a peep from the media.

Some famous person once said ‘No matter how cynical I am, I just can’t keep up.’

This surprises you? Somehow “Dem majority” and weaning anyone off the federal dole just don’t jive. Instead they will expand that dole with health care and who knows what else. As a conservative there are more than a few Republicans I’d like to bitch slap for their part in this too.

As to why people aren’t pointing fingers at the drought? A U of MN economist sums it up very nicely: “Ethanol is the one thing we can do something about. It’s about the only lever we have to pull, but none of the politicians have the courage to pull the lever.”

There is no moral courage left in Washington, DC; I’ve had it with the lot of them.

Excellent point. I am not necessarily for term limits, but we need to figure out how to get away from having permanent politicians. These guys are either good at nothing else, or so desperate to hold on to their seats that they will say and believe anything.

We have a local ethanol plant which supplies ethanol directly to several E85 fueling stations. The price is lower than the energy lost in burning it versus gas so they are selling a lot more than they expected.

Meanwhile Brazil strikes a huge oil field offshore. It would be wise to follow brazils lead and drill for the abundant offshore oil.

The real reason why Brazil is energy self sufficient.
http://money.canoe.ca/News/Sectors/Energy/2008/04/14/5282621-ap.html

“If proven, the oil in the exploration area called both Carioca and Sugarloaf Mountain by analysts would also be five times larger than the Tupi oil field, whose estimated reserves of 8 billion barrels were announced by Petroleo Brasileiro SA in November. Petrobras also announced a blockbuster find of natural gas in February in an Atlantic Ocean field nicknamed Jupiter.”

Good points above, all.

Expect more of the same. Free market principals will be casually thrown under the bus. Starving Haitians would get more consideration from Justin Volpe than the US congress.

Every consumer for all three of those products is currently paying too much* (*”too much” makes no sense in a free market, but since corn is government subsidized, it screws everything up)

Does anyone think this would happen without subsidies? Even if food prices aren’t affected, this isn’t a sign of a healthy market.

Again, one can contact their senators here and their representative here.

that sounds a bit arrogant. he may have to eat those words one day–there may be no corn left to eat

And just wait until they start using that cooking oil to make biodiesel.