DIYbanter - View Single Post

wrote:
Thanks for the datapoint.
I'm curious. Are you a small farmer (own use only) or selling on the
market? Other examples I've read come out the other way. But I'm not
in that farming industry so I don't have any way of sorting out the
nonsense from the special interests.
Matter of relativity, but I am considered a small farmer by most. I
run 280 acres of cash crop(mix of field corn, soybeans, sweet corn,
sweet peas).

I'm still not at all supportive of the subsidies. Paying money to keep
the price high just doesn't work. And whatever the tax mechanism, tax
money is going in there somewhere.
I don't want to turn this into a big debate about subsidies and
everything they represent. Most of it is a perpetuation of
misconceptions and half-truths by the media. I recieve very little to
none from the government. Most years I recieve nothing from the
government. Some years I get a little. Certain portions of the
industry do recieve large subsidies. Corn is not one of them. FWIW, I
am against subsidies for the most part. I understand why they were
implemented and support the intention behind them. However, like most
government programs it has been corrupted by cronyism and pork
barrelling.

Based on what I read on labels, most pesticides I believe are
petroleum-sourced. Organic controls will be different.
Most are some derivitive of an amino acid complex. Where this amino
acid base comes from varies. Some are naturally derived, some are
sythesized from various sources. Like I said previously, I don't know
the exact chemical process and root stock used for each pesticide.

I do know that Anhydrous Ammonia is a direct product of natural gas.
It is manufactured by injecting steam into natural gas and then refined
from there. I finally took the time to look it up. This doesn't
really account for very much. Using the average of 33.5M BTU natural
gas to produce 1 ton of NH3, this is only another 14k BTU per bushel of
corn. From my previous post, that still leaves 351k BTU net gain per
bushel.

Depending on where you grow the corn, irrigation and its water/energy
costs will factor in.
Not a factor for me. Not far away from me it is. On the sandy ground
irrigation is the only way to grow a crop. Where I am at, we can
attain 200+ bu/acre w/o it.