USDA Declares Natural Disaster Area In 26 States

This could make for a good presidential campaign issue if the Republicans wanted to eliminate E-10 to stabilize the food markets

ROFLMAO - I'm sure Romney will get right on that...

I'm glad you found it funny, we all know it will never happen when they are all in bed with the USDA and farmers.

A farming crisis will result on more federal cash going to the farmers to get them through this growing season, while our lobstermen get the to suffer in their seafood market, and the rest of us get to pay for all this in several forms.

Every farmer knows there are risks to plating a crop! Some years are bumper crops and other years are a bust.

Lobstermen do not want handouts from the Feds, to many strings. We will weather this and the less interference from govt the better, this just the free market at work.

Kudos Islander, just put it out there as a group that also struggles. The bread basket of middle America has always been under government control and funding. It all started with the policies on Western expansion. Everything is dependant on corn and soy, there are not real alternatives when something of this magnitude hits. The economic impact will be felt sooner then we think.

I'm glad you found it funny

Our government has devolved into a free for all to see who can get the most free stuff from the public treasury. To confirm this all one has to do is look at the tax code that is over 70,000 pages long. Is there any reason on earth that a fair tax code would be that long? Only one. That is to reward the politically connected.

To even imagine that Romney will do anything concerning the ludicrous ethanol policy we are saddled with is to be living in a fantasy world.

Here is something that could only happen in a fantacy world: Will Congress Let Monsanto Write It's Own Rules In The 2012 Farm Bill?

Well Boehner will make it look like he cares by making a threat to block the bill from the floor. Good Old Boehner Will Try Not TO Cry This Time

The historic drought baking the nation's breadbasket is about to hit American consumers where it hurts most -- the supermarket checkout

Everything from breakfast cereal to roast beef will cost more as a result of the worst drought in 24 years, which has already prompted authorities to declare more than 1,000 counties in 26 states -- nearly two-thirds of land in the lower 48 states, stretching from Nevada to South Carolina -- natural disaster areas.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/17/historic-drought-conditions-can-lea...

Last Nights NBC Evening News ran a story on the rising prices of Corn commodities. A USDA figurehead was looking rather nervous discussing the implications of this drought.

One of the experts went on to talk about the demand for international food aid in poor nations and how the US has helped to develop agriculture in desert nations. He was stating that we had a situation back in 2008 with corn shortages: Note that many blamed it on the E-10 legislation. He was saying that this drought will impact 1/3 of the US farms, but it will not be as bad as the 2008 situation because we are not giving way so much corn to poor nations.

The situation is going to take a tool on the already weak economy. Yet, our own Federal government continues to ignore it’s obligations to the continuants and instead would rather supply corn to poor nations to keep stability and keep feel good E-10 regulations in place. If USDA where on the side of the average consumer they would be calling of a suspension of fool hardy programs and conserving corn for national preservation.

States like Maine should be paying close attention to this issue. I heard a farmer say, not too long ago, that he had to ship all his animal feed in from the Mid West. There are no grain and feed producing businesses in the North East. Hello, Opportunity? NO, we would rather make wood pellets, when we have an State that was founded on agriculture. Corn will not be an option this year to burn in the pellet stove! Might help some wood pellet makers, but there is big money in grain to be made.

Some local farmers in Maine are catching on and growing soy crops to make their own feed. If a farmer can supply their own feed they get a better yield on their live stalk.

Other reports in the news suggest that many Big Ag industrial farmers are culling their herds to prepare for the increases in grin prices. You can buy a cow at a discount or get s stake cheap for the next few weeks, but wait until the adjusters go out and give a report on how bad the situation is going to be for the corn crops.

In my opinion the USDA is the worst thing that ever happened to farmers.

The "farmers" who will profit from the latest manipulation, and siphon into the public treasury, are the "farmers" such as "Monsanto, Archer-Daniels-Midland" and so on, you know, those "corporate farmers"!

I was in Arroostook in the late 1960's and FMHA came around urging farmers to take out these "1 percent loans" to update their farming equipment and practices. Before it was done, many had lost their farms to the banks, including many family farms in the midwest also, the Maine potato industry was nearly destroyed, and family farming took the biggest hit in it's history.

Go away USDA! This little farmer wants nothing to do with you!

WC

Interesting report there Wooden…The updating of equipment is not always necessary. When the Great Depression hit the State of Maine many farmers had not been able to afford gas powered tractors, up to that time period, and still had horse drawn equipment. When gas prices got out of reach for the average farmer they were adept and suited to switch back over to the draft horses to work the land.

If something similar happed today many farmers would need to have lesions on how to operate horse drawn equipment. I’ve seen many priced on sale as yard decorations, when someday they may be needed to work a field.

I have a 3600 lb team of Belgian draft horses in my pasture...........just in case!

The FmHA "program" was the tool that was used for "corporate farmers" to gain control of the farm land, the most valuable part of the equation.

Many farmers of the time had forgotten history as their forefathers had a long time hatred of the banks.....going back into the middle of the 19th century. When John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barker gang and others, were robbing banks in 1933, many locals were very sympathetic to the gangsters, due to this disdain for what bankers had done to farmers over the years.

I am living in the middle of what is left of Maine's dairy industry today, and I can see this all around me. Many farmers, have to have the latest piece of machinery, tractor, mower or pick one. They are so heavily into the banks that they could never survive if the economy gets much worse. When you are heavily leveraged, you are vulnerable.

We have one modern tractor, which we own, we have a 1939 Farmall H, a 1960's 90 HP Cockshutt for mowing and none of our field machinery is newer than about mid 1980's, mostly older, much older.......and we own it all, lock, stock and barrel and would have it no other way. If we need something, we go buy a piece of junk that somebody else gave up on, and repair it. I learned well from my frugal grandparents and parents, that staying out of the banks is good insurance!

WC

Of course all the money spent to make the desert bloom in the northwest US and cheap hydro power to drive the processing plants to make french fries had absolutely nothing to do with the decline in potato production in aroostook county!

The sixties also saw the advent of the"great society" which forever changed the work ethic of the country, and at about the same time, the disappearance of an available workforce to raise and harvest crops thereby necessitating a need for capital to purchase equipment to automate such things.

FMHA did damage to the county, but not by loaning money.
They did damage by installing stupid bureaucrats that used stupid strings to control that money.

Center-pivot irrigation was invented in 1949 by farmer Frank Zybach. Center Pivot Irrigation Systems: How To Keep A Garden In The Desert

They run from $350 per acre to $200 per acre for longer systems.

The sixties also saw the attempt to introduce a large scale water project to northern Maine that would have brought affordable power to run potato processing plants as well as some irrigation.
That project, Dickie-Lincoln, was hamstrung by none other than Edwin S Muskie in favor of the "too cheap to meter" electric production of Maine Yankee.
Northern Maine gets left out again.

Report On USDA's Warning Of Farmer Shortages
In just the five years from 2002 to 2007, the percentage of American farmers and ranchers 65-years-old and older grew by 22%, while the percentage of farmers 45 and under fell by 14%, according to the USDA's 2007 Census of Agriculture: Farmers by Age. For each American farmer younger than 25, there are five who are 75 or older, according to the USDA. (Snip)

Land is the biggest isssue for any start up farmers and guess who is willing to step in there in give out a great big loan?? The USDA and Company!

I have a 94 yr old uncle in Illinois who runs the family farm with his 60 yr old son. They farm several thousand acres, corn and soybeans. Don't know about his soybean crop, if any, this year, but he told me today they expect to lose about 50% of their corn crop, due to the lack of H2O. No matter what one's business is, the loss of 50% of your production is a big hit.

Thomas Jefferson Quotations on Agriculture

"The class principally defective is that of agriculture. It is the first in utility, and ought to be the first in respect. The same artificial means which have been used to produce a competition in learning, may be equally successful in restoring agriculture to its primary dignity in the eyes of men. It is a science of the very first order. It counts among it handmaids of the most respectable sciences, such as Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Mechanics, Mathematics generally, Natural History, Botany. In every College and University, a professorship of agriculture, and the class of its students, might be honored as the first. Young men closing their academical education with this, as the crown of all other sciences, fascinated with its solid charms, and at a time when they are to choose an occupation, instead of crowding the other classes, would return to the farms of their fathers, their own, or those of others, and replenish and invigorate a calling, now languishing under contempt and oppression. The charitable schools, instead of storing their pupils with a lore which the present state of society does not call for, converted into schools of agriculture, might restore them to that branch qualified to enrich and honor themselves, and to increase the productions of the nation instead of consuming them."[9]

Muskie should have read some more Jefferson before shooting down Nothern Maine's ability to grow crops.

Excellant quote from Jefferson.

American family farms....The original solar based renewable energy producers.

......."The sixties also saw the attempt to introduce a large scale water project to northern Maine that would have brought affordable power to run potato processing plants as well as some irrigation.
That project, Dickie-Lincoln, was hamstrung by none other than Edwin S Muskie in favor of the "too cheap to meter" electric production of Maine Yankee".......

Ugenetoo, You left out one of the huge highlights of that era.......in the County, Freddie Vahlsing's "great sugar beet fiasco".

Do you have any idea as to just how much money was wasted on that?

From Time magazine, 1970: ........."
Though he considered himself a Republican, [Vahlsing] regularly purchased tables at Democratic fund-raising affairs, entertained politicians at his hotel suite............Equally important, Freddie sought to boost the state's shaky economy by opening Maine's first sugar refinery, enabling farmers to take advantage of a much-prized 33,000-acre federal sugar-beet quota"........

........."Now Democrats—and particularly Senator Edmund Muskie—find Freddie a liability. Maine's sugar-beet business is verging on collapse".......

Freddie Vahlsing

........"Vahlsing is the President/Chairman of Maine Sugar Industries, Inc, the former sugar plant operator who defaulted on a $10.2 million in Maine Industrial Authority guaranteed loans on building and farm machinery"........

Bangor Daily News, way back in the day!

Lots of "shenaningans have been pulled off in the county over the past few decades. I remember driving over Easton way, with my first truly beloved (??) and driving by the bloated carcass of this particular beached whale.

WC

Ya

My dad participated in that great experiment, as he did in many others in the quest to find an "alternate" crop for northern Maine.
We're still looking.
Sadly, the County is and has been a democrat stronghold due to the thinking that all that money the dems meter out will trickle down to the residents when, in reality, 99% of it goes back south.
I guess that makes us part of the 1%.
I was too young to understand the economics of raising sugar beets, but am about to try it next spring to use as a winter deer feed supplement as an experiment.
Funny how things keep coming around.

The Great Wheat Revival In The County

Cold weather crops and a short growing season make for a critical window of time. The spuds are always a solid crop, but the crop rotation calls for some grains. When Russia had it's harsh growing season in 2010, the Maine wheat crop took on a new light locally.

Same old story, just a different crop,

Northern Maine has enough growing problems such as short growing seasons and unpredictable rainfall without taking away the ability to use fertilizers and pesticides.

Organic grains have been grown in my area of S. Aroostook / N. Penobscot.
The guys gave it up last year due to poor yeilds and high labor inputs.

There may be some hope in the grass pellet/biomass experiment.
http://umaine.edu/ext-energy/blog/2010/10/21/grass-pellet-technology/

I grew up on a weed farm (not the type you smoke, but bail into hay). We spread horse manure in the fall and watched it grow like most Maine farmers today. The USDA has yet to regulate weeds, but they sure make a killing fighting them with Roundup!