The changing economics of global agriculture

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by Berger_4_

Well, I've read through most of this thread and I'm curious...how many people on here are actually involved in farming, either through actual farming or through crop management and the like?

I grew up on a large cattle ranch. Worked as a hired man through high school and in the summers when I went to college for a neighboring seed farm. Worked as an Agronomist right out of college for a multinational crop protection company. Worked for an independant fertilizer and chemical company as an Agronomist. In my current job, 100% of my customers are farmers.

[BurningDownTheHouse]

My husband is a grain farmer, 4500 acres of land and we have a small herd of cattle. I grew up on a mixed (cattle/grain) operation. After making use of my Education degree for 3 years, I got my P. Ag. (Professional Agrologist) and CCA (Certified Crop Advisor) designations and am now working in the agriculture/crop management industry.

HotHotHeat - interesting post about water as a tradable commodity. I certainly have reservations about that. Particularly regarding supply.

[V]

I threw a few bucks at HAU-T this morning. Hopefully the price of grain goes through the roof!!

[Berger_4_]

Ooooh booohoooo,the poor hard working farmers. Salt of the earth, dusk to dawn working and heroes in overalls.

We feed the world, so yeah I'd say we kind of are heroes

I'll be glad when they truly allow agriculture to be free market. Instead of having our country and all other western nations subsidize their lifestyles.

You can market your grain freely. You don't need to apply to CAIS or NISA or have insurance. But if you want help in times of crisis, it's nice to have.

Must be nice to be in an industry that whenever there is a disaster, you get bailed out by the government.

Are you in an industry where you have half a million dollar inputs before you see a cent yourself? Where you borrow that half a million dollars, then see all your crops fail. Do you potenially lose all of your earnings and possessions because of a season at work?

I'd love that kind of security.

As I said...it's not secure at all. Markets fluctate every day. The weather fluctuates every day. The only thing your secure in is that you put in the work, and hope something comes of it

I hope the government and the CWB get out of the whole agricultural industry,

Farmers are given the option of not dealing with the government and CWB. Hell, they just about disbanded it.

then the farmers can earn their dollars like I do.

How do you earn your dollars? Sitting at a desk all day? Do you put up a small fortune every year in order to make a tenth of what you put up? Are you the one taking all of the risks in your job to make things work?

Unfortunately, they'll have to compete against all the third and fourth world country farmers who won't have to compete against governments to provide grains for cheaper.

Does your industry (in which you apparently work so hard) compete directly with the third and fourth world? And besides, their grain would be utter junk. They don't know how to properly farm.

Farmers always want the free market, then the BSE or something else will hit, and then they'll cry for intervention. Can't have it both ways. Let's free market this like any other good and commpodity in the world. About time.

You have unemployment insurance. That's your intervention. It doesn't matter how well you did your job, if you lose it, you've still got a paycheck coming. A farmer can do the best job in the world, then "the BSE or something else will hit" and there he'll be, broken and out of money.

[burn_baby_burn]

Speaking of farmers taking risks. A friend of mine, who I worked with in Australia and is now a chem rep in Western Australia, sent me this story this morning.

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/stor...2-2761,00.html

A WA grain grower is about to take the biggest gamble of his life by planting a $10 million crop - thought to be Australia's biggest ever - in a bid to beat the drought.
Merredin-based John Nicoletti agreed he was “throwing the dice” in planting the monster crop but was confident good rains could see a return of up to $40 million on his 100,000ha harvest.

“This is a big gamble and it all depends on the rain gods,” Mr Nicoletti said.

Mrs Nicoletti said her family were not farmers, instead preferring to call themselves primary producers.

“I came from a farming background in Italy,” she said.

“In that 30 years farmers have become clever business people.

“Wherever you go, financiers and bankers, farmers are not perceived as clever business people and I don’t like it because to survive in the farming industry these days you have to be clever.

“There is a stigma attached to the word farmer.”

[Bobblehead]

Here's an interesting project at a Quaker Oats factory in Scotland.

Quaker, which produces Scott’s Porage Oats at its Uthrogle Mills plant near Cupar, is to invest £6 million in a combined heat and power biomass boiler which will make it carbon neutral.

But Pepsi-Co, which owns Quaker, said the steam and electricity produced would reduce carbon emissions by 9000 tonnes a year—equivalent to the typical annual carbon emissions of 3000 cars.

Surplus power will be released to the National Grid, preventing a further 1800 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually for the first three years.

The move will also cut out the need for transporting husks away from the site, which accounts for 172,000 miles and 600 tonnes of carbon emissions a year.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2...11062142t0.asp

I wonder what the previous use of the husks was? But this seems like a great idea - using the waste product of the process for fuel.

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

I wonder what the previous use of the husks was? But this seems like a great idea - using the waste product of the process for fuel.

I would assume that it was mixed for feeding livestock.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by burn_baby_burn

I would assume that it was mixed for feeding livestock.

That would be my guess,too; but it isn't explicitly stated and I don't know if there is an easy replacement for that item in feed.

I know one summer I worked in for a dead stock removal company (which more than convinced me of the benefits of higher education) and in the previous few years the business had shifted from them being paid for some of the, shall we say, unused product, to companies taking it away for free, to companies charging to take it away. That hit the bottom line pretty hard.