NYT,pg1: Mountains of Corn and a Sea of Farm Subsidies (corn pile photo)

Mountains of Corn and a Sea of Farm Subsidies


Mark Kegans for The New York Times
About 2.7 million bushels of corn is piled 60 feet high on the ground beside full elevators at an agricultural cooperative in Ralston, Iowa.

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: November 9, 2005


RALSTON, Iowa, Nov. 4 - As Iowa finishes harvesting its second-largest corn crop in history, Roger Fray is racing to cope with the most visible challenge arising from the United States' ballooning farm subsidy program: the mega-corn pile.

Soaring more than 60 feet high and spreading a football field wide, the mound of corn behind the headquarters of West Central Cooperative here resembles a little yellow ski hill. "There is no engineering class that teaches you how to cover a pile like this," Mr. Fray, the company's executive vice president for grain marketing, said from the adjacent road. "This is country creativity."

At 2.7 million bushels, the giant pile illustrates the explosive growth in corn production by American farmers in recent years, which this year is estimated to reach a nationwide total of at least 10.9 billion bushels, second only to last year's 11.8 billion bushels.

But this season's bumper crop is too much of a good thing, underscoring what critics call a paradox at the heart of the government farm subsidy program: America's efficient farmers may be encouraged to produce far more than the country can use, depressing prices and raising subsidy payments. In other words, because the government wants to help America's farmers, it essentially ends up paying them both when they produce too much and when their crop prices are too low.

Indeed, this season's huge volumes weigh heavily on farmers, who already have suffered a string of misfortunes: a large overhang of grain from last year, coupled with soaring energy costs and two Gulf Coast hurricanes that stymied transportation, and a severe drought that distorted prices. Together, these events have conspired to depress corn prices and potentially make this the most expensive harvest ever for the federal government....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/business/09harvest.html

don't join the GOP in cutting programs that support jobs and business that actually are going to stay in America.

So, in keeping with the mood from last night let's do our part to support America and DRINK MORE WISKEY!

percentage of the subsidies. Acquiring additional acreage is the way to make money in some farm belt areas, because the subsidies keep you going.

Capping the dollar amount of subsidies might be a way to keep the medium and small farms going, thus retaining a good number of people with the skills to farm, without handing over money to the ridiculously oversized operations.

If they want to cut the ag budget, that is the way to do it. Not a blanket cut that hurts everyone.

But the GOP is fixing to turn their back on farmers in the same way they turned their backs on small merchants to facilitate the growth of the Big Boxes like Walmart.

There in lies an opportunity for the Democrats to find new causes and new constituencies.

X-number of bushels of corn per year, X-number of bushels of soybeans per year, etc. Same with dairy producers, base it on so many pounds of milk produced. That way, good farmers that produce large crops on smaller amounts of land would be rewarded, while factory farms would only be able to get a small amount of subsidies. It'll never happen, but I think it would be far more fair than the current system.

YUMMY

DRINK!

The world does not have too much food. There are people in need of that corn pile so why can't we find a better way to deal with it. It should not sit and rot. I hope they find a good home for it.

aside:
Why does it have to be only MREs that we send to hungry people?

I'm all for helping with famine relief but sending corn is pointless in many cases because the group being helped is not used to corn in their diet. The government should subsidize the production of Millet, Lentils, Chickpeas and other grains that will be used to feed people and not livestock.
One big problem in food aid is the free grain competing with local producers by driving market prices down thus preventing locals from making a profit on their crops. It's a complex issue.

I see a big pile of bio fuel. The question is how much energy did it take to produce a given quantity of fuel.

End corporate farm welfare and subsidize the small farmer.

As it is, any of the former Soviet states would be able to use it as well Mexico and Central Am. It would only cost shipping and the extra corn would be removed from our market keeping the price level. The recipient region's crop values will remain inflated due to high demand related to their qualifying famine.

A brand new industry and it's expenses would only add to the cost of this corn pile.

It would be nice to handle all issues with one stroke, environment, family farmmers, fuel idependence, etc, but...

Speaking as an ex-farmer's daughter (we had to give it up in the 70's)
This corn needs to be stored or used now
and it shouldn't be allowed to glut our local markets when there is international demand for it.
Bumper crops should be spread around as goodwill offerings and not stockpiled to rot. It's a time honored tradition to celebrate such times with charity.

Investment into new ventures based on one harvest is also risky in the event of a future draught or irregular season. Bio-fuel is a great idea but the corn supply for it must be planned for and not just the result of one or a few record crop years.

This particular pile is already starting to get hot on the bottom and we need a quick fix.

Nobody knew how to cook it & many people could not digest it. ("Corn" can mean any kind of local grain--this was Maize.)

But there are hungry people in the Americas & Africa who could use it. Or use it for bio fuel, as you suggest!

The native americans learned to use lime to unlock the nutrients.
The idea of sending Corn to Central Ameria and parts of Africa where they know how to use it is a good idea. Care has to be taken not to kill local production by flooding the market. Local NGO's would probably be the best people to handle distribution.

From what i've seen so far, the administration would spend many times what the grain is worth to get one of their captive contractors to handle the delivery.

which costs more and more per bag, and raise an even bigger crop, which makes prices go down more every year. In buying that better seed, farmers are buying a better rope to hang themselves with.

It would help if American business people would quit selling Brazil etc. farming supplies and infrastructure. It would also help if everyone in the world didn't hate us, reducing us the the "supplier of last resort" when it comes to farm commodities.

Some people think we should get rid of subsidies, but what are we going to do? Not grow any crops in the whole country?

Not sure what part of corn is used, but there's a fuel alternative use.

We burn a mix of corn and wood pellets in our pellet stove. The corn is not supposed to ignite as easy but it puts out more heat so we do a 50-50 mix. Other than that we'd probably burn more corn than pellets (they do have corn-only stoves).

Wood pellets are starting to get harder to find because they are processed wood waste and the manufacturing capability is limited. Corn is easy to get and cheaper. We've already found a local farmer that can provide all the corn we need throughout the winter.

Imagine a "range" of piles like that, with 3 peaks.

Even with the hot, dry summer we had, it looks to be a bumper year.

It is pretty impressive, I'm tellin' ya.
There's always a pile out back of the terminal to take what the silos can't, but this year's is the biggest i've seen in 7 years of living here.

This is a clear case for biodiesel....

I would like to climb that pile of corn just to say I had.

With the price of corn depressed and the price of gasoline inflated, that seems like the obvious thing to do.

NO ALASKA OIL FIELDS

Don't have a clue myself. Hoping somebody else may have an idea.

http://www.makersmark.com/BourbonGlossary.aspx

Makers' Mark Bourbon is 86 proof (43% alcohol/volume), but a typical batch of raw whiskey is around 135-140 proof (67.5% - 70% alcohol), so all you'd have to do is, rather than pouring it in oak barrels to age for several years, distill it some more. I guess you'd probably wind up with around 800 gallons of reasonably pure alcohol.

curious as to whether anyone has considered the use of bioengineered seed... maybe it's not even truly fit for consumption? Also, we should be encouraging our "agribusiness" farmers to diversify their crops, MONOCULTURE is BAD, BAD, BAD! I'm not talking about switching from just corn to corn and wheat, i'm talking about creating local collectives to identify community needs. CSA's are only the start... we should demand food security. A favorite book of mine i would encourage anyone to read- The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry.

right?

:eyes:

That whole, "paid not to grow corn" thing was done away with by the Freedom to Farm Act in, I believe 1996. It was rendered nearly useless as a price contol by glabalization.

I know corn grows on cobs ... is that pile of corn+cobs, or just kernels. If just kernels, how do they get them off the cobs? What do they do with the cobs afterward?

:shrug:

The combine takes the corn off the cob and the cobs are spit out the back into the field

WTF?

the local staple.

Starvation is very painful. Can drive a human to eat anything even remotely edible~~including each other.

Julie

The more pressure for reducing the ridiculous farm subsides for the most efficient farmers in the world the better.

In order for the less developed countries to thrive, the developed countries have to stop spending their way into closing export markets to farmers in less developed countries. The EU is the biggest offender, of course. But the U.S. (on corn, soybeans, sugar and clothing, etc.) is an awful offender in this regard as well.

You'll just hurt the poorest Americans by doing that...people shouldn't have to choose between eating dinner and paying their electric bill, and yet eliminating subsidies will force many already marginal Americans to do just that. Once Americans realize that the price of corn is going to double just so some third world farmer can make a buck, the politicians WILL begin to receive pressure to rescind the treaty. It didn't receive popular opposition simply because most Americans didn't understand what it really meant.

The idea that American food should be MORE expensive so that overpriced foreign food can be competetive in our markets is asinine.

When criticizing European subsidies, it was always mountains of butter and lakes of wine. I think corn deserves its own cliche - maybe continents of corn, or even planets.

"most expensive harvest ever for the federal government...." should read "..most expensive harvest ever for the US taxpayer." :grr:

Gyre