Can't reply to this as fully as I would like, because I'm leaving for a
weekend trip, but....
Dan Minette wrote:
>--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "K. Feete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>I think the measure I'd use, and that I've heard my father use, >is "cost
>>per pound of milk produced". This includes cost of labor, >cost of fossil
>>fuels, cost of feed, cost of depreciation to the >land,
>
>What depreciation of the land? The historical trend for farm prices is
>upwards. Yes, there was a bust after the speculative boom of the late 70s,
>when inflation made everyone think that land was going out of sight, causing
>land to go out of sight, but Wisconsin or Illinois, or Iowa farm land bought
>in the 1960s would have been a good investment in the year 2000.
Most farmland now is being bought by developers, not farmers, so any real
estate statistics are suspicous. Also, I don't know as much about the
midwest as I do about the East Coast, but I have serious doubts about
your numbers, Dan; most of the farmland bought for farmland (which is
almost nil) around here has to have a few thousand dollars dropped on it
before it's productive again, and most of the farmers around here are
going out of business because their land is no longer productive.
>Kat, there may have been a few idiots who damaged their land, but my
>father-in-law regularly won honest productivity contests (where they measure
>the storage bins before and after) and his land yield kept on improving. He
>has told me that theyíve learned a lot about taking care of the land. He
>still owns his farm, and rents it out to a farmer he knows for decades.
>
>Heís owned the farm for about 40 years, and before that it was his folkís
>farm. His family has farmed that land for about 75 years. You would think
>that the depreciation of the land would show up in 75 years, wouldnít you?
I'm not questioning your uncle's record. There *are* a few good farmers
around who have taken care of their land and reaped the rewards. But....
>But, that is one case; what about the US as a whole. Since he is a corn
>farmer, I decided to look at the historical yields for corn.
I don't doubt that the yields have gone up; they've done the same for
dairy. But the *cost* has also gone up. In dairy farming, we now have
cattle who produce much, much more milk, but they also eat more, require
more medical care, and wear out faster. The yield has gone up, but the
profit margin remains the same... if not smaller. I'm not an expert on
crop farming, but I'm betting it's the same deal there.
>One other thing worth noting, modern corn crops have a lower impact on the
>land than older crops. My father in law use to rotate soy beans in with the
>corn. He stopped doing that when new corn hybrids were developed that were
>more ìland friendly.î
Uh, Dan... I may not be a crop expert, but even I can see the problem
here. The reason corn is so hard on the land is that it's a high-nitrogen
crop; the reason it requires beans (most commonly) to be raised or
rotated in is because beans are nitrogen fixers. There's no way to
decrease the nitrogen requirements of corn without decreasing the
productivity that I know of, and there's absolutely *no way* that
Monsanto could have developed a GE breed of corn that was a nitrogen
fixer without me knowing about it. That's the agricultural version of
cold fusion.
The only thing I can think of that he'd be referring to is that the new
corn might more readily accept and absorb commercial nitrogen
fertilizers- plants and animals (though more animals, I think) often
don't utilize synthetic nutrients properly. But this doesn't really
qualify as "land friendly." I really don't know what else he could be
referring to.
>The wholesale ìusing upî of the land through repeated growth of the same
>crop is something I remember from my Minnesota history class. Minnesota
>wheat farmers were prosperous for about 8-10 harvests, IIRC.
I remember it from all that time we spent on the Great Depression,
personally. Your point is valid, but with modern farms a little outdated.
Most farmers are able to offset the effects of land depletion by the
application of chemical fertilizers. This doesn't help the land one bit,
has the all-to-familiar environmental side effects, and adds to the costs
with my aforementioned results- yield goes up, cost goes up.
I'm out of time- I'll reply to the rest of this message and your second
one when I get home. In the meantime please CC any replies to me
personally since I'm signing off for the weekend....
Kat Feete
---------------------------------
Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
-Terry Pratchett
