On 7/21/2011 1:14 PM, dpb wrote:
On 7/21/2011 8:08 AM, Kurt Ullman wrote:
....
You have any data on how the make up of the corn crop has changed?
FOr example (and example only as this is n=1 "study", some of the
farmers in our area changed from growing sweet corn to yellow field corn
precisely because of the extra money they could get.
...

Nationally, no I don't have any...

See the other posting...note that if all the sweet corn production went
to field corn it would only be a blip in the total acres planted that
would be well within the statistical uncertainty of total acres planted
(650,000 out of some 92,000,000 is 1%).

Also, production data indicates fresh corn production has double over
the last 30 years on slightly reduced acres while the processed sweet
corn production is up some 25% on roughly the same acreage so what
transferring to field corn there has been has been more than made up for
in increased yields.

I'm curious as to the size, location and general type of operation of
your sample--is this a large producer of sweet corn that switched or a
small producer? Does the operation generally raise commodity products
or is it primarily (or all) perishables? My (admittedly pretty limited
as everything out here is large operation commodity grains and/or
cattle) experience w/ those who have perishables is that they're
(relatively) smaller operations and concentrate on those to the (near)
exclusion of commodities owing to the required intensive labor and
operational differences between the two types of production.

Hmmmm....another thought--wonder how much of the acreage lost is owing
to the shutting down/off of water to sizable areas in CA over the
conservation and endangered species fights as well as the diversion to S
CA (LA)??? I wonder if in fact a major portion of the production
acreage might not have gone away in that move altho I don't know exactly
how to find that out in that detail.

Well, what I can see in the data at hand is that in the early 90's
roughly 20,000A, then nearly 30,000A in late 90's thru early 2000s, and
then down to 25,000A in 2007. That isn't strong enough to know for
certain but timing is somewhat coincidental...

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