The Sky Is Not Falling (And Even If It Is Falling Ethanol Did Not Cause It To Fall)

[JRfrom OR]

No discussion of the ethanol mandate and competitiveness can be complete without accounting for the behemoth in the room, foreign oil.  Our young coming home maimed or in body bags, a billion dollars of wealth leaving this country daily, and a staggering military bill to police the global oil trade. 

Somehow we can turn a blind eye to this, we just leave the bill for our children to pay.

[highyields]

roarintiger1

the cattle numbers around my place are down from 10 year ago anyway, but yes the cows are going to market,  I've been selling off some every few weeks.  with the commodity price boom there is very little hay left,  and we have lots of horses to eat the hay that is grown around here, I can sit here typing this and think of 20 head of horse within a 10 mile radius of my house without even thinking about it.  They are buyiny ALL the hay.  and then we have had guys stealing big round bales out of the field.  Just heard last night over across the river in iowa had another 18 bales stolen from one guy.  we had 4 stolen this spring 14 last fall.  

we had good rain in june and then the heat set it and that was it., grass is dried and and we are feeding  range cubes once a day to help the cows get through.   we we'll have stalks this fall given no snow or mud.  We have some continuous corn that didn't get an ear on this year, we are going to chop that for silage.  that should get is through this winter. 

I'm not for sure if the cattle price well fall much more, just because we are still exporting beef.  Domestic demand isn't great for the high price cuts.  We have become a hamburger nation.   we are going to run through a rough period here, but we well come out of it. There is going to be demand for cows and calves in the future,  IF the drought ends and IF the economy stays place.

If you have room in the freezer and you like beef, you might want to got stock up on some,  It well Have to go higher, if everything stays the course.  

There was alot of hype this year about how cheap corn would be this fall, and I think alot of people bit on that, And honestly if this drought would have not materialize corn would be cheap.  But all animal feeders could have used call options to hedge against price increases.  Even the ethanol plants could have done this,, I know options are not cheap but going out of business is not cheap either.  

My fear is that we need rain this fall to get this grass through the winter,  otherwise this grass may die yet in the pastures. 

We had a real bad drought in 2002 but this one is different again.   In 2002 the grass stayed greener then it did this year.   I was told once that every drought year is different.  unfortunatly I found out that was true.   

[too close for comfort]

Well you have my interest. How in the heck do you sneek in and steal round bales? Can they be rolled onto a trailer?

[hwr247]

amen to the post about our young being maimed.....we tell ourselves over and over in the media how much our independance matters to us and yet we are dependant on small radical countries that have a hard time getting along with themselves let alone anyone else! we seem to forget how our sons and daughters have sacrificed just to keep cheap oil flowing and when the price gets low enough we lose our drive for energy independence.when will we learn?