What the world needs now

Three million more acres of industrial corn?

Posted by Tom Philpott at 1:51 PM on 18 Apr 2008

Read more about: industrial ag | cellulosic ethanol | agriculture | Department of Agriculture | Big Ag

According to USDA projections, U.S. farmers will plant 86 million acres of corn in 2008. At any time in the last 50 years, that would be plenty. Since 1958, USDA figures tell us, farmers have broken 80 million acres only ten times.

In fact, if farmers meet expectations, 2008 will rank as the second-largest planting of corn since 1949. If you own shares in a fertilizer company -- corn being an extremely fertilizer-intensive crop -- you're celebrating. Indeed, shares of Mosaic, a fertilizer giant two-thirds owned by Cargill, have more than doubled in value over the past six months.

And yet, this year's corn planting won't be quite enough to "feed the world" while also satisfying demand for ethanol, i.e., feeding our cars.

As a commodity broker recently declared, as reported by Delta Farm Press:

[Current market conditions] tells me we need more corn and the volatility in the corn market will continue. I think we need a minimum of 3 million more acres of corn.

Rather than foul an additional 3 million of acres of land with corn -- a land mass roughly equal to three Rhode Islands -- how about we just pull the plug on the ethanol program? Just a thought!

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Land use and wildfires

Buenos Aires, Argentina, is choking from the smoke coming from fires on nearby islands set by farmers to clear pasture lands so they can grow more soybeans. One article I read also included the displaced cattle raisers as setting fires to clear "unused" land to make new pastures for cattle.
One type of people displace another type of people that displace something else. Etcetera.
By the way, I read some where that soybean production is down by 15% in Brazil and Argentina for this past growing season (Southern Hemisphere). This in turn affects the price of soybeans in the USA.
If more USA farm acres are shifted to maize corn this year (like last year?), then upward price pressure will continue on all agricultural products: corn, wheat, barley, oats, sunflowers, soybeans, rice, etc.
I view that commodity broker you mentioned above as trying to get others to feed his addiction to playing the commodities trading game.
Mr. Philpott, thank you for your reporting on agricultural issues. I would like to see you write more on the effects of the interconnectedness of what crops are planted.
More and more, I think that the first big hit our species is going to take is going to come from the reduction in food production. Due to internal political pressure, India will soon stop exporting rice. Vietnam and Thailand are also considering doing the same. Those are the top three exporters of rice.
And in Africa, Mugabe has started another wave of reducing agricultural production in Zimbabwe.

at a remove

by ataremove at 5:06 PM on 18 Apr 2008

Farm Bill Repercussions

Another potential wrinkle in the mad dash to plant more corn acres can be found in the Farm Bill. One of the programs authorized in the Farm Bill is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). This is one of those programs that pays farmers to not plant land that is "marginal". Marginal could be highly erodible, near a stream or other water body or on a slope. When corn was $2/bu or less, this program helped defray the cost of not planting these areas. Farmers could still make more money if they planted the ground, but most all of them did the right thing and enrolled in this voluntary program.
Now that comodity prices are climbing, the temptation could be to pull these areas out of this program and plant them to corn or beans. If someone could perfect cellulosic ethanol, we could plant these areas (CRP ground)to perennial grasses and mow them for ethanol production and leave the good ground for food production.

by otocco at 6:35 PM on 18 Apr 2008

Diminishing returns?

Global topsoil depth (maximum) in 1970: 11" (27.9 cm)
Current cropland topsoil inventory: 3,600Gt
Global average topsoil depth (2008) : 6.6" (16.8cm)
Typical depth of crops root zone (critical level of topsoil where productivity drops off sharply) : 6" (15.2cm)
Net loss of topsoil erosion (yearly rate): 75GT
Time remaining before critically low levels of topsoil is reached: 4 years

http://edro.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/topsoil/

by LGT at 8:14 PM on 18 Apr 2008

telling the Lord what we don't need

We can never have enough love. But I am not sure why we need to say "No!" to more mountains:

http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/austinpowersinternationalm ...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 6:43 AM on 19 Apr 2008

No to more Mountains

They are not only saying no to more mountains here but destroying the one's we have.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

by Pompey Road at 7:11 AM on 19 Apr 2008

Just Stop Driving

This is getting just ridiculous.

by racc at 7:55 PM on 19 Apr 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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