76 comments on More thoughts on ethanol after the State of the Union...what will farmers do, and have they read the research?
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I've been thinking about dusting off my old 1958 John Deere combine, which can harvest shelled corn, and growing a field to see what kind of return I can get.
If the economy goes into recession and the price drops, I'll just feed the crop to my cattle, who truly love a little corn to supplement their hay.
If you've got a paid-for ranch, and a paid-for combine, it seems like raising some corn could be a pretty good deal.
And, of course, use the corn proceeds to buy some more solar panels and a wood-burning stove.
The focus is on corn but not sugarbeets do you know why? The #'s look better.
Well, then I guess we'll need a sugar-beet subsidy ...
LOL...of course, I missed that.
We have close to that, in a sugar subsidy. With current sugar at .18 cents per lb, and return to etoh around .10 cents, beets have a long way to go. And I imagine the sugar industry will fight sugar to etoh tooth and nail.
No doubt a bunch are wondering that. Where the numbers start crunching is in an operation's soy to corn spread. I've read a few ag notes which suggest switching 20% out of soy into corn. But all also say to lock in your base corn with a contract today, right now, use the soy 20% for spec. today's contract is 4.00.
Especially with gas down, many are wondering if these prices will hold. They've been burned before, often, and aren't sure they want to jump. Today's contract future price looks great, but Sep prices are another matter.
It would be nice, if not done on TOD already, is for RR or someone to post a series of tables depicting the relationship between corn prices, ethanol prices and oil prices. I believe 2.00 gas and $4.50 corn won't fly, but it'd be nice to see the break even spread over a range of oil and corn prices.