[obol] Seed Prices (& everything else)

[Don Baccus]

On Jun 18, 2008, at 11:17 AM, Kat & Bill wrote:
>
> Ann out of Myrtle Creek brought up an interesting question. What is  
> going on with seed prices? According to the owner of the feed store  
> where we shop, it's because of corn. Now it's very profitable to  
> grow corn for ethanol, so farmers are abandoning seeds for corn.

There have been studies of this that would make one suspect that the  
ethanol excuse is a bit bogus.

But, regardless, prices will go up a lot this year, because a large  
percentage of the nation's corn fields are lying underwater or are  
totally saturated, so corn plants are ankle rather than knee high.   
When corn has been planted.  (wet fields and those big old huge  
tractors with the cab having air conditioning, GPS, and a satellite  
feed to ESPN are incompatible with saturated tractor-eating soil).

Also price pressure is increased by  things like 1) severe drought in  
Australia 2) a very wet last season in Europe driving down production  
3) steadily increasing importing by China, whose economy is doing well.

One of the great things about a world economy is that it can help  
spread risk when local events cause pressure on ag goods etc to rise.

One of the less great things (for consumers, not farmers!!!) is that  
when large chunks of production suffer (Oz and drought at the same  
time western Europe has wet, cold weather followed the next year by US  
cornfields being underwater, etc) even those areas like the US who  
produce well find producers able to sell at higher prices overseas  
than domestic wholesalers would normally pay.

> Also, the cost of gas is so crazy, it makes trucking things even  
> more expensive.

Well, yes, fuel goes up, everything goes up.
----
Don Baccus
http://donb.photo.net
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http://openacs.org