Wheat planting down in Nebraska and in USA

[Mike Nolan]

Something for bakers (and bread eaters) to worry about, this article says that at the current price of wheat, around $3.50 a bushel, Nebraska farmers are losing about a dollar a bushel on their winter wheat crop.

http://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska/nebraska-wheat-plantings-lowest-on-record/article_b2e9dc4a-451a-5d7e-81a4-6155e51c281f.html

At typical extraction rates, a bushel of wheat produces about 42 pounds of white flour, so at $3.50 a bushel the cost of the wheat in a pound of flour is about 8.3 cents.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

Well, at least we aren't Venezuela (yet).

[RiversideLen]

Both interesting articles. Suddenly I have a taste for brownies.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Another interesting article here. Grocery prices are going down. Across the board.

[Mike Nolan]

The egg crisis appears to be over, I saw them at a promotional price of 40 cents a dozen recently, almost a 10th of where they peaked. (But there are new reports of avian flu at chicken ranches, so who knows what will happen by summer.)

I've read about some possible disruptions in the vegetable market due to unstable weather in California.

And of course import duties on Mexican produce at the border (a bad idea, Mr. President) might cause major problems.

And farmers need to make SOME profit!

In some small towns in Nebraska, the challenge these days is keeping the local supermarket in business!

[Bronx]

Being a suburban kid, I can't even begin to know what life is like on a farm. But it always amazed me how farmers could make any money on produce especially with items like corn and potatoes.

I grow corn in my back yard garden and with all the work and time it takes just to get 2 ears per plant, how can a retail supermarket sell ears of corn for 20 cents or less each (when they're on sale)? And I can get 10 pounds of potatoes for 1 dollar or less. I'm sure the farmer gets just a small fraction of that; how do they make money?

Bronx

[Mike Nolan]

Commercial farming is a volume business. It takes a lot less effort per plant when you've got many thousands of plants.

A farmer with 1000 acres of corn (a pretty big farm) might get 140 bushels of corn per acre, or 140,000 bushels from his fields. At $3.00 a bushel that's $420,000. Now, of course that's not profit, you have to subtract out the cost of seed, fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide, fuel, vehicle costs, any hired labor, property taxes and so forth.

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