On 4/22/2014 12:38 PM, Gunner Asch wrote:
On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 07:44:56 -0500, wrote:

Hence, US corn
is still as cheap as it is available. Can't do no better than that.

....

The bottom line is the food versus fuel issue is very real and it will
only get worse. To meet the 2022 mandate of 35 billion gallons of
biofuels using corn-based ethanol, crop land dedicated to corn will
have to increase from 88 million acres to 233 million acres. That
would increase the total crop land in the U.S. to 461 million acres,
which is highly unrealistic. The most U.S. crop land ever planted was
375 million acres, back in 1932."
....

A) Nothing says either 1) the 2022 mandate will stay in effect or, even
if does 2) that it has to be met by corn-based ethanol.

B) In 1932, average corn yield was roughly 25 bu/A; now it's routinely
150 on a national average. Good corn can easily be 250/A; the current
competition production record is 450 bu/A to give an idea of what upside
there may be.

C) Since the early 60s, the yield trend is roughly +2 bu/A/yr increase
in national average yields with no indication of any systematic
reduction in that linear trend. With the continued advent of genetics
and practices, there's no reason not to think that continued production
increases are on the horizon.

D) There's some 40 million acres of idle farm ground, a fair amount of
which is reasonably good crop ground. Dad put a great deal of our
ground into CRP (Conservation Reserve Program grass) as well as several
our neighbors of roughly the same age back in the early- to mid-90s when
they were either like he ready to retire or in some cases nearly broke
given the disastrous farm economy of the time. While not prime corn
ground, certainly it could go back into production as it was for the 70
to 80 years prior to that...it does well in winter wheat, milo (grain
sorghum), canola, and a number of other crops. We're still farming what
wasn't put in but just in this very small local area just around our
place there's some 10,000 A that's been out of production for going on
30 yr. Out of that I'd say only about 1000 A or so would not be
suitable to be broken out. But, even yet, the economics just aren't
that good that there's no major stampede to do so and I doubt in my
lifetime I'll ever increase our current production acres given present
age and the capital costs in expanding equipment, etc., that would be
required.

So, all in all, I'm not terribly worried about the pseudo debate...I
don't think it's really real in real shortages being at all likely.

--