Just The Facts

Worth a listen.

Cc

Grain Drops

Rain. Good and plenty. Not to be confused with Mike & Ike. The mike announces the news, the news drives the algobot trading machines. Pro Farmer is having their annual crop tour. Muddy boots in August? Big beans. Big round soybeans. Maybe even another level of pods. The corn can only get heavier. Heavy corn and beans. Gravity. Test weights really add up. Will it make up for the collapse in commodity markets? No. Will it further cause it? Of course. But it is in the direction of helping. By default. A lot of people will be crushed between here and help. Some recovery as early as January but maybe not until next planting season. In Iowa, not Brazil. They’re already there. Our strong dollar has their beans still near the teens. They can plant year round down by the equator. Two crops a year. Grow baby grow. But we are here. In Iowa. Foolishly? Sell in May and go away. Now it’s nearing the harvest flush. Buying opportunities are here. Or soon will be. Keep your powder dry. While it rains.

Cc

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The Land Of Milk & Honey

Got Milk ???

(& Honey?) *

Farm gate prices are collapsing. Further. Raw material prices in general are so far below parity and have been for so long that our national economy is now indebted to the tune of umpteen trillions of dollars. If one doesn’t pay for the extraction of raw material at the point of sale credit must be extended to pay for that extraction. Current parity prices for corn stand northwards of $12.00 per bushel. For soybeans parity stands north of $28.00 per bushel. And those were 2012 parity prices. I can’t tell you what current parity for milk is.

I can tell you I have heard reports in the news that some farmers are dumping milk into the manure pits under the dairy barns. I suppose as a protest move to bring the spotlight of public awareness to the recent plight of dairy farmers. Apparently world wide. In Great Britain current farm gate prices for milk have fallen 25%. That’s according to an article in the Guardian dated Monday August 10th. I don’t think dumping milk into the pits has become commonplace but who knows? I imagine milk does have some fertilizing effects to add to the manure.

In this neck of the woods some neighbors have hog confinement units that hold a thousand head each. They stupidly are constructed to house the growing hogs in a pen with slatted cement floors above an open sewer pit. These pits are pumped down once a year or so and the manure is knifed into the soil and recycled as fertilizer. The tank wagon that hauls the liquid concoction out to knife it in is commonly called a honey wagon. But that taint honey in the honey wagon. Even if you add milk.

* (Would that be a shit eating grin?)

Cc.