More Bad News on Crops

[Broomstick]

From the New York Times - this caught my eye because the farm areas discussed are those in my area. For several weeks many farmers coming into the candy store where I work have complained they can't get crops in because the fields are either wet or flooded, but this just confirms the problem. We have very unusual amounts of rain and storms - the immediate damage was tornadoes and floods (including one that caused a damn breach that emptied Lake Delton in Wisconsin) washing out roads and homes, but long-term it could impact lots of things that use corn (maize) and soy.

CHICAGO — Commodity prices went wild on Wednesday, with the price of corn shooting through the $7 barrier for the first time, soybeans and wheat moving up sharply and oil jumping more than $5 a barrel.

Corn prices, which have been hitting new highs for a week, are reacting to six weeks of heavy rains and cool weather in the Midwest. That prevented planting in some areas, leading some farmers to abandon the crop in the last few days. It is still raining.

The bad weather comes as supplies of corn, wheat and other staples are already tight thanks to soaring global demand.

The higher commodity prices are likely to add to a worldwide inflationary picture that seems to worsen by the day. Prices of many grocery items in the United States have been rising briskly, with some goods like eggs and milk — produced from animals fed with corn — up by 13 to 30 percent in the past year.

“You know those complaints you’ve been hearing about high food prices? They’ve just begun,” said Jason Ward, an analyst with Northstar Commodity in Minneapolis.

Corn for July delivery closed on the Chicago Board of Trade at $7.03 a bushel, up 30 cents. Next year’s corn was trading even higher, finishing at $7.47 a bushel and above. Soybeans, which rose 70 cents, to $15.16 a bushel, are now less than a dollar short of their winter record.

Even wheat, which had fallen in recent months as traders and growers predicted a big crop, rose 60 cents to $8.69 a bushel.

[snip]

The Agriculture Department this week cut its yield expectations for corn by 5 bushels an acre, to 148.9 bushels, a big drop for a growing season that has just begun. It now estimates the 2008 crop at 11.7 billion bushels, down 390 million bushels from what it was expecting last month.

Since the rain has not yet let up, these figures could prove optimistic. In its weekly crop rating, the Agriculture Department said that the quality of the corn was notably lower this year, with the amount deemed “excellent” only half that of the 2007 crop.

Rick Corners of Centralia, Ill., had to replant all 500 acres of his corn after it rotted, something he had never done in 33 years of farming. He finished last week, a month behind schedule, and considered himself lucky.

“I heard about a farmer in northern Illinois who had to plant his corn three times, and now he’s under water again,” Mr. Corners said.

Soybeans are generally planted after corn but their price is also being pushed up by the weather and other developments, including a report that China increased its soybean imports in May by 45 percent from the previous month. A strike by Argentine farmers is also serving to limit the world’s supply.

Palle Pedersen, an agronomist at Iowa State University in Ames, said 20 percent of the soybean crop in the state still had to be planted or replanted.

“Every day it rains, the chances of an average crop get smaller and smaller,” Mr. Pedersen said.

The abundance of rain in the corn and soybean belt for the last six weeks — accompanied until recently by chilly temperatures that impeded crop progress — was highly unusual, said Dale Mohler, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.com. “A wet spell of this magnitude in the Midwest probably only happens once every 50 years,” he said.

However belated, relief might be on the way for beleaguered farmers. The meteorologist said he expected drier weather to prevail next week.

The crop news is not entirely bleak. This week, the Agriculture Department raised by 2 percent its forecast for the size of the winter wheat harvest, which is now under way.

By the way - we are getting more storms tonight. I can hear the thunder outside even as I type this.

[Shinova]

Damnit, we could probably use some of that cool weather over here.

[Broomstick]

On the flip side - more people planting vegetables in the yard

CASSANDRA FEELEY prefers organic ingredients, especially for her baby, but she finds it hard to manage on her husband’s salary as an Army sergeant. So this year she did something she has wanted to do for a long time: she planted vegetables in her yard to save money.

“One organic cucumber is $3 and I can produce it for pennies,” she said.

For her first garden, Ms. Feeley has gone whole hog, hand-tilling a quarter acre in the backyard of her house near the Fort Campbell Army base in Kentucky. She has put in 15 tomato plants, five rows of corn, potatoes, cucumbers, squash, okra, peas, watermelon, green beans. An old barn on the property has been converted to a chicken coop, its residents arriving next month; the goats will be arriving next year.

“I spent $100 on it and I know I will save at least $75 a month on food,” she said.

She is one of the growing number of Americans who, driven by higher grocery costs and a stumbling economy, have taken up vegetable gardening for the first time. Others have increased the size of their existing gardens.

Seed companies and garden shops say that not since the rampant inflation of the 1970s has there been such an uptick in interest in growing food at home. Space in community gardens across the country has been sold out for several months. In Austin, Tex., some of the gardens have a three-year waiting list.

George C. Ball Jr., owner of the W. Atlee Burpee Company, said sales of vegetable and herb seeds and plants are up by 40 percent over last year, double the annual growth for the last five years. “You don’t see this kind of thing but once in a career,” he said. Mr. Ball offers half a dozen reasons for the phenomenon, some of which have been building for the last few years, like taste, health and food safety, plus concern, especially among young people, about global warming.

But, Mr. Ball said, “The big one is the price spike.” The striking rise in the cost of staples like bread and milk has been accompanied by increases in the price of fruits and vegetables.

“Food prices have spiked because of fuel prices and they redounded to the benefit of the garden,” Mr. Ball said. “People are driving less, taking fewer vacations, so there is more time to garden.”

Each spring for the last five years, the Garden Writers Association has had TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, a polling firm, conduct a national consumer telephone survey asking gardeners what makes up the greatest share of their garden budgets. “The historic priorities are lawns, annuals, perennials, then vegetables, followed by trees and shrubs,” said Robert LaGasse, executive director of the association. This year, vegetables went from fourth place to second, which Mr. LaGasse called “an enormous attitude shift.”

People like Rita Gartin of Ames, Iowa, are part of that shift. Last year she kept a small garden. This year it has tripled in size into a five-by-seven-foot plot because, Ms. Gartin said, “The cost of everything is going up and I was looking to lose a few pounds, too; so it’s a win-win situation all around.”

Ms. Gartin, who fits gardening into her 12-hour workday as an interior designer and property manager, is not intimidated by the 20 kinds of vegetables she has planted: she was raised on a farm with a giant garden. A fence has been erected to keep the deer and people out, and it’s where the pole beans and snap peas are already climbing.

She is ready to take a stab at canning, but reserves the right to freeze everything instead, she said.

“I probably spent maybe $50 for everything and that’s less than a week’s cost of groceries or the price of a gym,” she said.

Seed companies and garden centers say they didn’t see the rush coming. There wasn’t any buildup last year, said Barbara Melera, the co-owner of the D. Landreth Seed Company in New Freedom, Pa., who takes the pulse of gardeners at the 13 garden shows she attends around the country each year.

“We pack for all the shows and bring 16 different beans, 10 packets for each kind,” Ms. Melera said. In earlier years, by the time the shows end in March, she said, “we are lucky if we have sold two of the 10 packets.”

“This year,” she said, “we sold out the first show and literally sold hundreds. We never sell any corn; this year we sold out of corn by the end of the season. We saw the same thing in the mail order business.”

She said the greatest demand was for what she calls “survival vegetables”: peas, beans, corn, beets, carrots, broccoli, kale, spinach and the lettuces. “It was so different from what it has been in prior years,” she added.

Randy Martell, one of the owners of the Garden Factory in Rochester, says it isn’t just vegetables. “The potted fruit trees were sold out by the first week of May,” he said. “Blueberries, raspberries and grapes are sold out. I think those sales have doubled. Overall sales are up about 30 percent.”

Seed companies and garden centers are seeing large increases in sales.

Dottie Wright, greenhouse manager at one of the Dammann’s Lawn, Garden and Landscaping Centers in Indianapolis, said she talks to people every day who are starting their first vegetable garden. “If they don’t have a yard they try containers for tomatoes and herbs. We can’t keep the herbs in this year.”

Thrilled as gardening experts are about this phenomenon, they know that many first timers don’t have any idea how much sweat equity is involved.

“Many people I sold seeds to have never gardened before,” Ms. Melera said, “and we have to find a way to educate them so the experience is successful. They have got to be taught.”

Mr. Ball of Burpee knows some of the new gardeners won’t stick with gardening beyond the first year. “Some people can’t get with the idea of digging a hole; getting buggy, sticky and hot,” he said. “Gardening is an active hobby; it’s a commitment.”

Doreen G. Howard, a former garden editor for Woman’s Day and now a writer for The American Gardener, is one of the committed. She has had a vegetable garden for most of the last 25 years. This year she has quadrupled the size of her vegetable plot in Roscoe, Ill., because of the economy and because she thinks the quality of store-bought produce has deteriorated. Once vegetables were just 5 percent of her garden; now they are 20 percent.

“Food prices have gotten to the point where we are seeing the difference,” she said. “It’s pushing our budget and we are a two-income family. It was never a concern before.” Ms. Howard said her grocery bill for two went from $100 a week to $140 a week this year.

She has chosen many vegetables that freeze well, investing in a secondhand freezer to store the bounty. She plans to dry the herbs that grow on the back porch next to boxes of mesclun, and to make pickles from the cucumbers and raisins from the grapes — her newest addition. And she is looking forward to a cellar full of Peruvian blue potatoes.

Some of Ms. Howard’s increased harvest will also go to food pantries through an organization called Plant a Row for the Hungry, which encourages gardeners to plant extra vegetables to share with the poor.

“I’m hoping to take $20 a week off my grocery bill,” she said. This is in the low range, according to Mr. Ball, who says a $100 investment will produce $1,000 to $1,700 worth of vegetables.

Ms. Gartin, now in her second year, says gardening is worth the effort.

“I got soft calluses from hoeing and digging,” she said, adding cheerfully, “but my fingernails are still pretty — long and not chipped. I probably spent 30 hours putting the garden in, and when I’d come into the house I’d be covered in sweat. But now it’s pretty easy because of all the rain we’ve had.”

And the vegetables, she said, are “awesome.” “It’s a totally different flavor from what you buy in the store. It’s exciting to go out and pick the fruits of your labor.”

[Broomstick]

Damnit, we could probably use some of that cool weather over here.

The cool weather was last week - temperatures have now jumped up into the 80's and 90's F - that would be around 30 C.

[Broomstick]

If anyone is unsure about why so many on SDN are concerned, take a look at these assembled pictures (along with musical accompaniment) from the Great Depression, the United States in the 1930's. Of course, the Great Depression was NOT a US phenomena but a global one. Particularly poignant to my mind:

- Sign saying "Jobless men keep going - we can't take care of our own"

- the unemployed, long lines of unemployed people looking for work, people alone in and in groups walking the roads with improvised packs looking for something better.

- people living in cobbled-together shelters or tents.

- soup kitchen lines, with the faces of the recipients showing despair and hopelessness.

- barren farm fields with utterly failed crops

- homeless military veterans camping next to the US Capitol building, where Congress meets

The parallels between then and now are startling - the 1920's were boom times, with a surging stock market, as were the 1990's. Hoover was a Republican president heavily favoring business (one of his most well know quotes is "The business of America is business"). Banks were failing (according to the FDIC no banks failed in the United States between 2004 and 2007. In the first six months of 2008 there have been four such failures - granted, not the deluge seen in the 1930's, but still troubling). Crops were doing poorly due to weather (drought and dust storms instead of current floods and disease). Franklin Roosevelt was an underdog Democrat with the liability of being crippled who had the audacity to run for president anyway and declare "the only thing we need to fear is fear itself". Obama was an underdog Democrat with the liability of being half-African, and he's telling us that yes things are bad but they can change and we can believe in that. I'd like to believe that these times will have a happy ending, but the 1930's were a long, nasty slog for those who lived through those times, and those years led to WWII.

Hard times, indeed, and not times anyone would want to see. I'd rather be laughed at for preparing for hard times that never come, than to have them come upon me unawares.

[Broomstick]

Behold, Cedar Rapids, Iowa:




Iowa City, Iowa:




What used to be Lake Delton, Wisconsin. Yes, that's a lake that is completely emptied out due to a dam burst. The lake and its associated fishing and tourist industries was 75% of the economy in that community.



Property damage was considerable, but it seems there has been no loss of human life:



You get the idea. There is, in addition to the pictured conditions in Iowa and Wisconsin, extensive flooding in Indiana and Illinois as well. Although I am still (thankfully) on dry ground two subdivisions near me have been flooded, and the county has had two road washouts. These, by the way, were not minor roads but major, 4 lane thoroughfares.

Flooding along the Tippecanoe River in Buffalo, Indiana, near the central part of the state:



There are at least two hospitals near Indianapolis, the state capital, that have had to be evacuated. At least one town has been completely cut off from road access.

Here is a link to Indiana flood warnings. It covers half the state. You can can see flood warnings in neighboring Illinois, including the one just to the west of the tip of Lake Michigan overlapping the city of Chicago and its suburbs.

The point of all this? The Great Midwestern Breadbasket will only be delivering soggy rolls this year. Corn crop losses are up to 40% in some areas, mostly flooded out, and increasing. The rivers are still cresting, and we have more rain on the way through Monday. We have tornado watches again tonight, as we have had for over a week, and every night some of those watches spot the real deal, which then wrecks the usual havoc. Corn should be knee-high right now - where it's growing at all it's about half that. Many fields have not been planted, or else are now dead. It's really too late in the year to plant corn and expect profit, so farmers are talking about switching to soy. However, you can't plant soy in standing water, and with continuing conditions as they are the soy crop will shortly start suffering losses.

In short - America will not be producing the usual abundance of corn and soy this year. Think of how many uses both of those crops have these days, and draw your own conclusions.

[CaptainZoidberg]

draw your own conclusions.

The government should put subsidies on staple crops like brown rice and beans, so that the US is able to import more and offset supply shortages caused by the removal of corn.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

draw your own conclusions.

The government should put subsidies on staple crops like brown rice and beans, so that the US is able to import more and offset supply shortages caused by the removal of corn.

I thought the US Government subsidizes just about anything in agriculture, even buying back crops to be donated to poor countries.

[Broomstick]

You have to remember that MOST corn/maize and soy in the US are not directly eaten by people. For example, maize is used for biofuel and in various industrial applications. Soy is refined not only into food but inks and lubricants. Shortages of maize will impact meat production - cattle, pigs, chicken, even fish farms feed livestock with corn. Soy is a commonly used cooking oil.

So yes, we can import food, but the impact will extend into industry. Those two crops are more than just food in today's world. The industrial processes that refine maize and soy into industrial products won't necessarily work, or work as efficiently, with other crops.

[Medic]

Wow -- the genesis of these storms keep passing through northeast Kansas but they're only so bad, they must get a lot worse upwind. (although one bad tornado hit Chapman, KS, south west of post here, dispersed before hitting Junction City / Fort Riley, then re-formed on the other side near the Manhattan Regional Airport)

That was LAST night. This afternoon another daisy-chain of tornado-producing storms (to be precise, storms that have the potential to produce twisters; it doesn't always happen) rolled through Topeka and Kansas city, again from the south west headed north east to Iowa and Illinois and eventually Wisconsin. Apparently I was flanking a twisting portion of the storm along I-70 for about 20 minutes that never did actually turn into a tornado. (coming back from KCI to Fort Riley)