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Phil Thien
03-28-2013, 9:26 AM
There was an interesting article in the paper this morning about our dwindling supplies of corn (due to ethanol fuel production).

There was another interesting article on news.google.com this morning about some pesticides screwing with the ability of bees to navigate. The bee pollination issue has been uniquely interesting to me.

I got to thinking, what would happen food-wise if we had a U.S.-wide crop failure, or two? What would happen if, for one growing season, we were unable to produce corn? Or soybeans? Or ???

Are there enough calories in storage around the globe to get us through that?

I guess the question is, how many calories does the US/World need a day, and how many calories are in the pipeline?

Any ideas?

Fred Maiman
03-28-2013, 10:08 AM
Did anyone ever tell you that you think about the weirdest stuff?

David Weaver
03-28-2013, 10:18 AM
Fortunately, corn and beans are basically grown from southern alabama to canada. The corn crop last year or a couple of years ago is probably about as bad as it would get. There are a LOT of irrigated acres in nebraska, kansas, oklahoma etc that will be grown regardless of whether there is enough rain water to make a crop, and a lot of those acres used to be in milo and wheat, the former is more tolerant of drought than corn and trades at the same price, and the latter is much more tolerant of drought.

If there was a serious shortage of corn, you would see a lifting or relaxing of the ethanol mandate and likely partial culling of herds. There would be a glut of meat on the market from farmers who aren't cash deep, but cash deep farmers would probably hold some of their livestock knowing that they could get a good return when the first wave was over and there was still a demand for meat.

There was some herd culling a few years ago when the economy tanked and money went to crop futures for safe keeping or inflation hedging, but eventually most of those farmers bounced their herds back or got out of the business. Row crop farmers are in so much cash now compared to pre-ethanol that I don't think you'd see a lifting of the mandate unless there was an enormous problem with food prices. That's only great for a farmer, though, if they own their acres. If they're renting, it just means that the landowner will see much higher rents and the farmer will have more risk in terms of cash flows, though they will clear more in a good year.

Renters have quintupled the rent on a farm my parents have a share of (as in, showing up at the door saying "we'd like to make an offer to rent and here's our offer"), and it's what I'd call somewhat marginal land. There's so much excess capacity in terms of food that even if the crop was 75% of a normal year, which is probably worse than most disaster years, there would be plenty if the ethanol mandate was lifted and herds were sold to avoid feeding (dropping the feed demand for corn, too). We actually consume (humans) less than 10% of the corn crop on an annual basis, which isn't a shock considering we do consume a lot of meat (that doesn't necessarily efficiently convert corn to calories for humans) and we use a very large % of the crop for ethanol (40% now?).

I hope this doesn't turn into a debate like the disability thread. I've heard some doosies on crop stuff. I suppose there is some trickle down benefit to me (or will be in the future) because of the cash rent price, but I don't agree that it's necessarily right and I don't know how many people I've talked to that have told me the ethanol mandate has no effect on corn price, other crop prices or meat prices, but it's been at least half a dozen. I don't know how anyone who has enough brainpower to walk on their own two feet could believe that.

At any rate, no clue on how much is in storage at any given time, even just on US farms, but it's probably a billion bushels at any given time on farms (not right after harvest), and at its lowest in the middle of the growing season (I saw an article stating that US farm stores were 315 million bushels september 1 a couple of years ago, and that was a record low for recent years). There's about 12 billion bushes of storage capacities just on farms (I did have to look that last part up).

Steve Rozmiarek
03-28-2013, 10:29 AM
Phil, the food that we produce pretty much all gets used in a year, so you can imagine the impact. One growing season's complete failure would be devastating to the world. It is a true world economy though, so there is more too it. The corn used to produce ethanol is not a direct human foodstock, it is usually a genetically modified crop, and not allowed for import into many countries. It does feed the worlds livestock though.

South America, China, Australia and parts of Europe are the other major ag producers, and the demand on the world food supply is tight enough that a failure in any of these places is felt worldwide. For example, the Ukraine has been in a drought, and their winter wheat exports have suffered, which have fueled a large price increase in the last few years.

The scariest thing that I know of to the industry is nothing in nature though, us farmers can deal with that. What worries this industry the most, is out of control regulatory pressure. I am being forced to spend ridiculous amounts of money on new fuel tanks, to replace ones that are in perfect condition, I'm loosing chemicals to regulation, so that I have to buy the same thing for much more money in a slightly different EPA blessed blend. I have to hire people to scout and maintain compliance in my fields for "bolters", which are a stage of growth of a biannual sugar beet, so that they don't go to seed and spread gmo seed, never mind the fact that it is impossible in our climate. There are more regulations coming than I can count, from EPA, OSHA, and the rest of the alphabet soup agencies.

The worst threat is banking "reform", it has all banks petrified that the fed will shut them down, so they are not loaning money to ag in a capacity that allows us to fund full production. We each borrow millions, and a tiny change in an ag bank can make it impossible for us to grow a good crop by not allowing a profitable business model.

Long story short, farmers are good at growing things, bureaucracy is not, and when the two mix, bad things happen. It doesn't take much bad to happen here to make people starve, we feed a huge part of the world.

Sheesh, sorry for the speech Phil, guess you hit a nerve.

Steve Rozmiarek
03-28-2013, 10:39 AM
I hope this doesn't turn into a debate like the disability thread. I've heard some doosies on crop stuff. I suppose there is some trickle down benefit to me (or will be in the future) because of the cash rent price, but I don't agree that it's necessarily right and I don't know how many people I've talked to that have told me the ethanol mandate has no effect on corn price, other crop prices or meat prices, but it's been at least half a dozen. I don't know how anyone who has enough brainpower to walk on their own two feet could believe that.



I like that David, your point is spot on. It's all a connected economy. Ethanol raises demand on corn which raises prices. Because cows eat corn, beef goes up too. So does anything else a cow eats, because the price of corn per nutrient value makes other nontraditional cattle feeds, like wheat, get used to save money. That causes wheat prices to increase, which drive up the prices of the other flour grains, etc...

The consumer pays for higher prices in the end, but the inflation they cause to get to the end user can be a huge problem. My input costs have tripled since 2006. Oh wait, there is no inflation...;)

David Weaver
03-28-2013, 10:43 AM
Steve, are you a farmer? I am not, but given that my entire background on both sides was farmers and we still have both farms in the family, it's nice to talk to people who still "make stuff" rather than "rent stuff out" (like my family does on both sides, landowners only for more than 20 years now). Things have changed a lot. I think the most disastrous thing that could happen would be something that would keep people from paying back their operating loans for a year (removal of the mandate, etc). Our renter pays us more in rent for dryland corn ground that's very than what it would clear gross based on proven yield prior to ethanol. There is a lot of money tied up now because of the crop prices, and the checks are still good every year for now. The price for used equipment out my way has gone through the roof, too, and there are a lot of BTOs that don't allow the paint to fade on *anything* before they trade it in.

We used to be a diversified farms area, and I guess there still are some. Used to also have a lot of dairies in the 50 head range, and every single person I knew who was in dairy when I was in school is out of it now. Some of them just retired and the kids knew there was money in it, and some have gone to mostly automated layer operations, which must be more stable or something. The dairies that are left that aren't enormous are mostly retirement age folks squeezing a few more years out of their operation by staffing with illegals, because their kids wanted nothing to do with it.

David Weaver
03-28-2013, 10:46 AM
I like that David, your point is spot on. It's all a connected economy. Ethanol raises demand on corn which raises prices. Because cows eat corn, beef goes up too. So does anything else a cow eats, because the price of corn per nutrient value makes other nontraditional cattle feeds, like wheat, get used to save money. That causes wheat prices to increase, which drive up the prices of the other flour grains, etc...

The consumer pays for higher prices in the end, but the inflation they cause to get to the end user can be a huge problem. My input costs have tripled since 2006. Oh wait, there is no inflation...;)

Yeah, all of that, and even beyond that, the corn acreage pushes out other crops. Corn, beans, wheat rotation was common for my area 20 years ago. It's corn on corn on corn on corn on.... now. It puts a lot of threat of replacement pressure on anything else that you can grow in terms of things we could eat directly when you get something relatively easy to manage like corn, why take a chance on anything else (buckwheat, produce, whatever...), especially anything that might be labor intensive.

And as a separate aside....the seed prices... :eek:

Kevin Bourque
03-28-2013, 2:44 PM
Deer are our biggest problem. We lost at least 25% of the soybean crop last year to those danged varmints!!!

Darius Ferlas
03-28-2013, 3:08 PM
Didn't the whole biofuel plan, specifically made from corn, turn out to be a complete fiasco?
I heard from various sources that using 100% of arable areas corn based biofuels could replace around 10% of the conventional oil consumption.

David Weaver
03-28-2013, 3:22 PM
I guess it depends on who you talk to. At the time it was implemented there were:
* cries for alternative fuels
* moaning and groaning about gas prices and gas additives and the push of petroleum refiners to use an oil based additive to gasoline instead of ethanol
* super low corn prices with the ability to grow more corn and a lot of marginal acres that were out of production because it didn't make sense to plan them, that makes cranky farmers
* tax incentive dollars just waiting to be spent to buy votes from people involved in the first two bullet points

Every study I've seen (and I haven't looked for a while now) either misses something in describing the energy yield or lack thereof, or misses calculating the actual economic benefit.

I still don't know what it is, but you're right, it has no hope of supply enough liquid fuel for us to all drive with and or use to heat our homes. It might make a lot more sense to burn the corn directly for domestic heat (though that's something that involves interaction, it's not a maintenance free heat).

It takes energy to distill it, but there are uses for the byproducts (dried distillers grains and gluten). I guess it probably takes a lot of energy to refine gasoline, too. It takes energy to provide anhydrous ammonia or dry fertilizer to grow corn year after year instead of replacing nitrogen (albeit at a lower and slower amount) with white clover or soybeans.

Building the plants made stainless steel makers and local trades very happy for a while, but when some of them got shuttered, it also made local investors (some of the farmers I've talked to invested as shareholders in plants) lose a lot of money.

It definitely supports the corn prices, but the unfortunate side effect of that is that it puts pressure on what is economically viable to grow domestically and creates a demand on food supply by mandate, and one that doesn't really do that much to mitigate the price of gasoline.

The market is so wound up in it and farmers and providers of inputs (fertilizers, seeds, equipment, chemicals) have so much interest in keeping the prices high though, good luck ever getting it unwound.

Myk Rian
03-28-2013, 3:29 PM
Didn't the whole biofuel plan, specifically made from corn, turn out to be a complete fiasco?
Doesn't everything our government does turn out that way?

Darius Ferlas
03-28-2013, 3:34 PM
Doesn't everything our government does turn out that way?
I've got some very strong feelings about governments, not just the US government but I've been around here long enough to know the thread ain't gonna be open for too long if we don't lean more towards purely rational debate. Politics is not rational by its very nature, though your comment is tempting for sure.

Apage satanas! ;)

So just looking at the practicability of the biofules, I would be game if I knew that farmers producing biofuels use biofuels for the entire production process and still can make a lving without any subsidies.

Myk Rian
03-28-2013, 3:40 PM
Yeah, I was just throwing that out.
Other pressure on our crops are bio-degradable plastics. I own stock in a company that makes the resins for those products. Those resins are made from corn, tapioca, other crops.

David Weaver
03-28-2013, 3:50 PM
So just looking at the practicability of the biofules, I would be game if I knew that farmers producing biofuels use biofuels for the entire production process and still can make a lving without any subsidies.

From a purely rational standpoint, ethanol probably stand on its own without a blenders credit (which offests road taxes or some such thing, I'm not expert on that). I'm not sure if there still is a blenders credit.

It cannot be made without additional energy inputs from outside the system, though, and there is no mechanism now other than regulatory to keep people from using corn to make ethanol. If the price ever went as low for corn or even close, where it was for a while prior to ethanol, it would be HUGELY profitable. (bushel of corn makes about 3 gallons of ethanol, less all of the trouble and strife to make it, but way back when, a bushel of corn was about $1.50-$2. I don't know what it is now....$6?

When it was $1.50 to $2.00, it was cheap to use corn as a heating source, even though you had to visit a corn stove once a day. Once corn went to $6 or $7 (no clue where it is now), that was a much less attractive proposition.

I suppose there are some instances where you can make ethanol out of corn or burn it in a furnace when it would otherwise have been garbage (moldy corn, etc).

Darius Ferlas
03-28-2013, 6:01 PM
From a purely rational standpoint, ethanol probably stand on its own without a blenders credit
No doubt about it.
In a few years we will be remembering good old times when gas was $10/Gal, so ethanol will seem like a deal, though an average serving of steak will cost as much as weekly wages.

David Weaver
03-28-2013, 6:14 PM
Hopefully, we'll be burning natural gas here by then because it's practically coming out of our ears here and it's so cheap we have gobs of wells that are waiting for the price to go up before they are drilled.

Dennis Peacock
03-28-2013, 6:35 PM
Just so you know........

This thread is being watched very carefully. Keep it non-political please. :D

Steve Rozmiarek
03-28-2013, 8:20 PM
David, I am a farmer on the very windy western side of the state. Interesting what you said about your families ground rent going up. I am predominantly a tenant farmer, and my business actually does better with low prices, because inputs go down. Rent, fertilizer, seed and chemicals all have a sliding price structure based on what the vendor thinks you are making for profit. My bigger, more efficient farm can operate on far skinnier margins than any little traditional farm, but when those guys think there is easy money in corn or whatever, they drive the prices of everything up. Like everything else, farming is changing. The day of the family farm is sadly gone. Economy of scale works here, like everywhere else.

You guys are talking about ethanol, so I'll throw in my $.02. I agree that ethanol production could stand on it's own. I doubt that it will ever be pushed there though, not many things ever become unregulated.

Kind of relevant, Phil asked about crop failure, so just to put into perspective what we are talking about for production, there are an estimated 97.28 million acres of corn going to be planted this year, 77.13 million acres of soybeans, and 56.44 million of wheat. Those are USDA program crops, so that data is tracked, and easy to find. The supply and demand report came out today, and said that there were 5.399 billion bu of corn, 999 million bu of soybeans, and 1.234 billion bu of wheat carryout. Those are bearish, and the markets dove. Everything went down $.40 to $.50 per bushel, which is a big deal. Point is, with that many acres, it is unlikely that there will ever be a zero production caused by weather. The one peril that can effect all the acres is political, which on Dennis' advice, I will avoid. Suffice it to say the incumbent white house party will not likely be in my area fundraising any time soon. Economic, geopolitical, and regulatory issues can devastate this industry. One thing to think about maybe, food can be used as a weapon quite effectively, and if we lost our ability to grow our own, it could be a very bad.

My little farm is all irrigated, but our water is drying up because of a bad extended drought. Even if the whole of western Nebraska turns into a giant sand dune, the world grain market will likely not notice for a while. but as tillable acres shrink every year, and population grows, eventually it will be an issue. Technology is making farming more productive, in my area 160 bu corn used to be considered ok. 15 years later, 190 bu is ok. Better seed, better chemicals, and better education. If we can keep doing that, we can continue to keep pace with population growth.

Phil Thien
03-28-2013, 8:37 PM
Fascinating feedback, thanks guys.

Hey Steve, what percentage of the seeds for corn, soybeans, wheat, etc., are coming from Monsanto? Does Monsanto have any major competitors?

Darius Ferlas
03-28-2013, 9:35 PM
Just so you know........

This thread is being watched very carefully. Keep it non-political please. :D
I spent the first 25 years of my life in a communist country so this always make me feel at home :)


Hey Steve, what percentage of the seeds for corn, soybeans, wheat, etc., are coming from Monsanto? Does Monsanto have any major competitors?
They used to have some competition but now they are a de facto monopoly with a silent nod of a few [cannot name due to restrictions against political topics and obscenities that would have to follow]. Their patents are in 90% of American soy and 80% of corn.

Phil Thien
03-28-2013, 10:38 PM
Is there any chance an outfit like Monsanto could screw something up in terms of delivering seeds that fail to germinate?

I'm just looking for possible single points of failure.

Ken Fitzgerald
03-28-2013, 11:00 PM
I spent the first 25 years of my life in a communist country so this always make me feel at home :)


They used to have some competition but now they are a de facto monopoly with a silent nod of a few [cannot name due to restrictions against political topics and obscenities that would have to follow]. Their patents are in 90% of American soy and 80% of corn.

You also voluntarily joined this community and in doing so agreed to not make political statements or have discussions of same.....keyword "Voluntarily". Dennis is just suggesting people do what they agreed to abide when they joined....:D

Stephen Cherry
03-28-2013, 11:15 PM
Hopefully, we'll be burning natural gas here by then because it's practically coming out of our ears here and it's so cheap we have gobs of wells that are waiting for the price to go up before they are drilled.

Happy 7000th post!:)

Darius Ferlas
03-28-2013, 11:15 PM
You also voluntarily joined this community and in doing so agreed to not make political statements or have discussions of same.....keyword "Voluntarily". Dennis is just suggesting people do what they agreed to abide when they joined....:D
Sure enough. I love "voluntary" agreements. Hence my self-censorship.


Is there any chance an outfit like Monsanto could screw something up in terms of delivering seeds that fail to germinate?

I'm just looking for possible single points of failure.
It seems like you found this point of failure, though multiple points of failure we cannot discuss lead to this situation.

David Weaver
03-28-2013, 11:19 PM
Happy 7000th post!:)

Oh my....I would've guessed I'd posted about 4500 posts. I'm kind of ashamed!!

Stephen Cherry
03-28-2013, 11:37 PM
Getting back to the original issue or crop failure; it seems prudent to me to have some food. Nothing extreme; no freeze dried space packs of survivor stew. But is it too unreasonable to have some cans of pork and beans? A couple of sacks of flour? (50 lb sacks) A couple of boxes of .22 ammunition for hunting squirrels, etc. Or even a good air gun. Where I live, protein is in great abundance.

The last thing I want to do is focus on the negative, and fixate on hypothetical problems, and I know that any of this is only going to take you so far, but it does make sense to look around and develop some contingency plans.

Darius Ferlas
03-29-2013, 12:08 AM
I'm all with Stephen on stacking up on food (don't forget to rotate it, or else critters will eat it) but what do you do when you live in a small apartment in a large city? Millions of people live like that. And will a thousand squirrels be sufficient to feed a few hundred thousand people? For how long? Surely, this would depend on the duration of the food shortages. We could get by through a month, perhaps two. But will 50 pounds of flower and 5 squirrels feed an average family of 2 adults + 2.3 kids?

Also, food shortages are not hypothetical at all. They happened and are ongoing in some countries as of now. There was an empire once called Rome. Food was the last thing they worried about. It was the most powerful empire and nothing could withstand its power. And then... severe food shortages in cities, plunder of farms by hungry mobs were among the major (though not sole) reasons for the collapse. Sadly, in situations of extreme hunger, every hungry person is potentially a source of protein.

Ukraine has some of the ridiculously fertile soils in the world, and yet they were hit by severe famine and incidents of cannibalism were not infrequent. Ireland experienced a similar fiasco almost 200 years before that. Those who escaped are among the earliest founders of this country.

Tom Fischer
03-29-2013, 2:10 AM
There was another interesting article on news.google.com this morning about some pesticides screwing with the ability of bees to navigate. The bee pollination issue has been uniquely interesting to me.
Any ideas?

The local apple orchard guy I go to in September has been complaining about bees (lack of) the past few years.
He rents his bees, has a huge cyclone fence all around and on top of the hives to keep the bears off.
Looks like a small house made of cyclone fencing. He is doing everything he can.

And price of apples is high around here (NW NJ) regardless of where you shop. The large grocery chains, whatever.
Was probably about $.79/pound 5 years ago, now about $2.50/pound, increase of way over 100% in 5 years.
So, it can't just be the locals guys, bad luck with frost, deer, etc.
Potatoes up quite a big as well. Maybe same bee problem.

Stories in the past claimed that cell phone towers were messing up the bees' navigation, saying the bees just got lost, couldn't find their way back to the hive.
From the little I know about plants, flowers, etc, if we have a serious honey bee problem long term, we are in deep do do. That would be a real problem, not imagined.

Jim Matthews
03-29-2013, 6:33 AM
The price of a given commodity in an inflationary period is not driven merely by S&D.

The value of a dollar has fallen over the past ten years, at roughly 26% rate of inflation.
An item valued at .79/pound should reflect a price of 1.00/pound at this rate.

Therefore, other factors are in play. I suspect that there is a combination of reduced output
do to many environmental factors (water supply chief among those) and commodity speculation.

So long as the money supply isn't reduced; which has not happened after any asset bubble since the Dot.Com downturn,
there will always be too much money seeking some place for a return on investment.

It's a multivariate problem.

Given the astounding girth of many neighbors here on the Massachusetts South coast, I would not say America has any
shortage of food on the shelves of our local grocers; nor are the inhabitants feeling any pinch beyond the
struggle to buckle up in their Escalades on the way to Foxwoods.

Tom Fischer
03-29-2013, 7:19 AM
Yes Jim, and I think most people would have to agree. But the FED and Washington DC are run by people, decisions by people. Decisions are made, perhaps political, but can be reversed. Quantitive Easing is problematic, but could be reversed. Washington excessive spending is a decision, could be reversed.

The discussion on bee pollination is not a discussion about decisions of people. It is a natural phenomenon. If something happened to this natural phenomenon, the ramifications would be huge, I think. Could have massive crop failures. And I also do NOT think that there is a human/modern science workaround, such as artificial irrigation, applying nitrogen to the soil, pesticides, etc. Please someone tell me I am wrong.

David Weaver
03-29-2013, 8:33 AM
It's likely the cause of the bee issues is not a natural phenomenon, but a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids.

There would be failures with total collapse, but not wheat or corn. They don't rely on bees to produce seed.

There are other insects that are effective pollinators (wasps, mason bees, etc), but most of them are solitary, or solitary compared to european honey bees.

I think that concern about certain foods or certain problems is perfectly rational, but concern that we will have a scorched earth armageddon issue over a food disaster is not rational.

David Weaver
03-29-2013, 8:37 AM
So long as the money supply isn't reduced; which has not happened after any asset bubble since the Dot.Com downturn,
there will always be too much money seeking some place for a return on investment.

It's a multivariate problem.


It's certainly true that money flows to commodities for inflation hedging, but it's not a long-term strategy if the currency doesn't collapse completely, because there are true end users for the commodities and the true end users will still have a supply and demand issues. You can prop up commodities if you'd like, as a store for money in the short term, but if there is a glut of supply the prices will eventually come down. Same as the corn issue described above, once inventory ends up being higher than expected, the bottom drops out of the market. If it's serious enough, one side of a contract doesn't fulfill their obligation.

Phil Thien
03-29-2013, 9:37 AM
I think that concern about certain foods or certain problems is perfectly rational, but concern that we will have a scorched earth armageddon issue over a food disaster is not rational.

Right. A particularly virulent strain of influenza-B will likely be our down bringing.

:)

All joking aside, I don't spend a lot of time contemplating these sorts of things. But you can't read some of the coverage without asking "what if?"

David Weaver
03-29-2013, 9:45 AM
I agree. My wife and other people will always tell me "____" is going to kill you if you don't "_____".

Fill in the blank with that. Could be heart attack if you don't eat better, cancer if you don't eat better, bird flu if you don't stock tamiflu, food shortage if you don't stock food.

I always like to tell my wife I don't worry about anything, because it's very unlikely that I'll be able to worry ahead of time about what actually kills me. It's much more likely that I'll worry about a whole bunch of things and ultimately have a cause of death I never worried about.

or more specifically, I say "you're not going to be able to pick what kills you". I'm guessing that's where the real worry comes from in most people, right? That something is going to be terminal, and it's going to be dreadful and painful right before it's terminal.

Steve Rozmiarek
03-29-2013, 10:49 AM
Sure enough. I love "voluntary" agreements. Hence my self-censorship.


It seems like you found this point of failure, though multiple points of failure we cannot discuss lead to this situation.


I agree Darius, that is the single most likely catastrophe.

This thread is very interesting, you guys are bringing up some great points. I'm glad Phil mentioned bees too. First though, Monsanto's monopoly.

Monsanto patented the first genetically modified event, Roundup Ready. Basically it is a gene modification that keeps RR corn and soybeans from being killed by a commonly used herbicide, glyphosphate. Monsanto made the Roundup too, so they controlled both sides of the equation, and made a mountain of money. The initial patent expired, and they keep licencing traits, but now other companies, Syngenta and Dupont mainly are competing with their own RR events. We keep getting new gmo traits, but so far none have packed as much punch as RR. We have corn borer resistance, a couple other chemical resistances, and some are claiming drought resistance. All are interesting if you need the trait, but none are universally appealing or particularly effective in some instances. Monsanto lost it's monopoly a while back, but ironically the prices of the chemicals and seed have gone up since. Question was could Monsanto mess something up and cause a disaster, I'd say no.

However, the EPA is involved in gmo up to their neck. They do asinine things regularly, like pull RR sugarbeet and alfalfa seed after they had been on the market for years. This created a gigantic problem in the sugar industry several years back. RR sugar beets are a great thing, and after two years of growing them, there was no conventional seed left, or the massive quantities of chemicals needed for them. Both had been replaced by the cleaner growing, higher yielding RR varieties. EPA forced USDA to go through the licencing process again because some organic seed grower in Washington state claimed in a lawsuit that RR beets could contaminate his crop, nevermind the fact that the regulation process was very thorough and he could have appealed then. The appeals court in San Francisco allowed him to sue. It was a completely bogus environmentalist wacko lawsuit, but it nearly wiped out a season of sugar in the US. It is the reason I mentioned the bolter inspections in an earlier post. It's hard to not be political without skipping facts, I hope I succeeded.

Now for the bees. I love it when people say the world would go hungry without them. Yes, we would loose honey, but that's about it. Think about it, an acre of pinto beans has 4,500,000 flowers. My farm grows 1,500 acres, so it has 6,750,000,000 flowers that need pollinated. The window on these is a week. During the same time on my farm, there are 6 billion wheat "flowers", and nearly the same number of corn. To pollinate these 18 billion flowers, all in about a week, it would take quite a few bees. Figure a bee can do one flower per 5 seconds, and works a 24 hour day, and I would need something like 7.2 million bees. I have none. They don't live here. There are the occasional bumble bees, but they are rare, and a few domestic hives for honey. Pollination happens via other means, mainly wind. Some flies do it too, and some plant architecture, ie corn tassels fall down to the silk to pollinate, but wind is the key. It shakes the plant, moving pollen, and then deposits it on a flower. I suppose there are places where bee pollination plays a bigger role, but it's not production ag.

David Weaver
03-29-2013, 11:01 AM
The bees are a problem more for fruit (like apple growers, especially, and almond growers in CA).

Where I grew up is a huge apple area, though. I do wish they'd get the neonicotinoid problem under control. Apple growers have no pull, especially against the chem lobbies, etc, and if neonicotinoids wiped out 90% of the bees (if that for sure turns out to be the problem), I'm not sure the apple growers could get an unbiased ruling from the EPA. The review for the neonicotioids isn't going to be finished for another 4 years or so, so I'm going to guess there will be no difference in the bee situation before then.

I am no big fan of monsanto, but it has more to do with their operations and their legal flexing than with their products. Someone (either M or a group that didn't want to give up using posilac/bst) convinced our state to adopt a regulation that milk couldn't be labeled as BST free or not BST free. As in made it illegal for someone to even say "milk produced by rBST free cows". I don't have a problem with them producing hormones that boost milk production, but I'm not a big fan when they claim that "i would be confused as a consumer if milk was labeled to indicate rBST wasn't used" for any of the cows (that was their argument, at least their public argument....implying people are not smart enough to make decisions). in my estimation, the private arguments may have had numbers of dollars in them. Who knows. where did the dollars come from (a dairy coop, mother M? who knows?) We don't get to know that.

Ultimately, the rules were revised to say you could label the milk but it had to also say that basically there's no difference in the milk. That's still a court debate issue, because IGF-1 levels are higher in BST milk.

In defense of the product side, RR beans and corn are probably partly responsible for our increased rent, and they have cut back the pesticide load on our land.

Tom Fischer
03-29-2013, 12:46 PM
It's likely the cause of the bee issues is not a natural phenomenon, but a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids.
There would be failures with total collapse, but not wheat or corn. They don't rely on bees to produce seed.
There are other insects that are effective pollinators (wasps, mason bees, etc), but most of them are solitary, or solitary compared to european honey bees.
I think that concern about certain foods or certain problems is perfectly rational, but concern that we will have a scorched earth armageddon issue over a food disaster is not rational.

Well, that's good to know, that wheat and corn are not affected by the bee problem (which is still a very poorly defined problem.)
But aside from apples (definitely affected by bee populations) what other types of produce are potentially affected?
I never said the bee problem could produce an armageddon, but a unexpected change in the nation's agricultural production could have large health impacts.
People can survive on wheat and corn for some time, but I don't think those two crops provide any where near the vitamin balance required for long term human health and longevity.

Just sayin' all of this, because the stuff that people are generally fixated on is pretty useless. Such as, I recently read that the Government is currently funding a study into the reproduction of snails: asexual vs. sexual.
As mentioned, nobody knows if the bee problem is a long term problem. But if it is a long term problem, it is 100% certainly a bigger problem than the reproduction habits of snails. And the bee problem could potentially be one of the larger problems facing us as a nation.

David Weaver
03-29-2013, 12:56 PM
I don't know what other people are fixated on, but I will agree with that, I get fixated on really stupid stuff like anyone else. Like obsession with saw making processes in the early 1900s, absentee auctions, fixing a dryer and then getting irritated by its design (destined to fail after not too many years)...It would be nice if we could turn all of that stuff off sometimes and just get more done and be aggravated only by:
1) things of consequence
2) things that we can actually do something about

Phil Thien
03-29-2013, 12:59 PM
But aside from apples (definitely affected by bee populations) what other types of produce are potentially affected?


Here is a list of plants that require bees:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees

Steve Rozmiarek
03-29-2013, 1:11 PM
David, you probably noticed the high fructose corn syrup flap recently. There are huge pots of money on both sides of these issues, and the corn syrup is a good illustration of one side loosing the pr war. I bet it's a similar situation with the BST free or not milk. Follow the money, this is big business, so there are plenty of perspectives funding the battle.

I looked up the nenicotinicides that my farm uses, and found one. A product called Poncho, which does a poor job of defeating wireworms in baby sugarbeets. It is a seed treatment that comes on the seed, and is so ineffective that we use a completely different product to get the wire worms, added as an in furrow treatment. I personally wouldn't be sad to see Poncho go away. I doubt there are many farmers that want to kill bees or any other nontarget species, and we target our treatments to make sure we don't hurt non targets. It gives the warm fuzzy's, and it's the law. The penalties are of a career ending scale, so I suspect that we do a pretty good job of self policing. By the time the EPA makes a determination, ag will have already probably quit using the product if it has too much risk.

Tom, snail sex??? I'm glad we will finally get that question answered!!

Darius Ferlas
03-29-2013, 1:16 PM
But if it is a long term problem, it is 100% certainly a bigger problem than the reproduction habits of snails. And the bee problem could potentially be one of the larger problems facing us as a nation.
It surely sounds sensational, and I am not in a position to defend the expense, but it's not really about the snails' hanky-panky habits. It's more about the genetic consequences of various methods of reproduction. The conclusions might potentially be of much more importance to agriculture than suggested by the eye catching headline.

David Weaver
03-29-2013, 1:18 PM
Anyone worried about honey bees could always help the cause by making a mason bee nest (they're included in the category of solitary bees on that list). They're already in use to pollinate fruit, and they do a LOT of pollinating per bee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_bee

Years ago, I used to (like everyone else) religiously keep my yard weed free, and I'd fertilize it. Last couple of years, I decided I didn't like mowing twice as much because of the fert, and I really didn't have any problem with the weeds, and it straight up seems kind of goofy to me that I would attempt to keep my yard in a cycle of constant maintenance. It's sort of like wearing makeup. My wife wasn't that happy to hear that I was going to do nothing other than prevent really problematic stuff (like ground ivy), but she doesn't take care of the yard.

Now in year two, I have a ton of clover anywhere grass often doesn't grow that well, and for the first time in a long time, I've seen honey bees on a regular basis, as well as mason bees. When my yard was weed free, I saw almost nothing. I'd much rather see the bees. As the economy has gotten worse (that hasn't affected me so far), I've noticed that a lot of the neighborhood has stopped spending otherwise good dollars to keep their yards in an artifical state of steroid pumped greenness complemented by insectcide to kill the bugs. So my lack of fertilzing doesn't look as out of place as it would have several years ago.

Steve Rozmiarek
03-29-2013, 3:56 PM
Here is a list of plants that require bees:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees

Phil, take the wikipedia list with a grain of salt. Alfalfa and most of the clovers they list are common crops here, and they too will without fail, produce seeds. The numbers per acre of flowers on a bean plant are probably tripled by alfalfa, and if it is not cut for hay, it will without fail, produce seed here in this bee poor area. Same with the clovers. I think they should have called the list "Plants aided by bee pollination", or "Plants bees prefer". BTW, an alfalfa seed pod has got to be one of nature's most interesting creations.

David Weaver
03-29-2013, 4:37 PM
David, you probably noticed the high fructose corn syrup flap recently. There are huge pots of money on both sides of these issues, and the corn syrup is a good illustration of one side loosing the pr war. I bet it's a similar situation with the BST free or not milk. Follow the money, this is big business, so there are plenty of perspectives funding the battle.

I looked up the nenicotinicides that my farm uses, and found one. A product called Poncho, which does a poor job of defeating wireworms in baby sugarbeets. It is a seed treatment that comes on the seed, and is so ineffective that we use a completely different product to get the wire worms, added as an in furrow treatment. I personally wouldn't be sad to see Poncho go away. I doubt there are many farmers that want to kill bees or any other nontarget species, and we target our treatments to make sure we don't hurt non targets. It gives the warm fuzzy's, and it's the law. The penalties are of a career ending scale, so I suspect that we do a pretty good job of self policing. By the time the EPA makes a determination, ag will have already probably quit using the product if it has too much risk.

Tom, snail sex??? I'm glad we will finally get that question answered!!

I fully understand anyone with something at stake taking their money to lobbyists and advertisements. I straight up just want to know if there's BST in milk, though, because I don't want extra IGF-1. I also don't want to drink milk from cows with a higher amount of mastitis. I understand that a dairy would definitely want to be able to use it if they have no issue with it because cows literally make more milk, and by the look of the tractors at every dairy I've been around, they could always use a few extra bucks. I also understand that a dairy not using it would like to have a stronger market for their milk than for milk that's produced using it.

I wouldn't advocate for it to be illegal to use it, I'd just like to have the information on my own. I don't like it when someone legislates that I can't have the information.

Tom Fischer
03-29-2013, 4:48 PM
It surely sounds sensational, and I am not in a position to defend the expense, but it's not really about the snails' hanky-panky habits. It's more about the genetic consequences of various methods of reproduction. The conclusions might potentially be of much more importance to agriculture than suggested by the eye catching headline.

Yes, I would sure like to know what the consequences are (how snails reproduce, and the immediate effect on the economy).

On the other hand, the apple orchard man I mentioned in my town lost his entire apple crop last year. No, it was not all due to lack of bees. He also had a May frost. Some trees were damaged (the flowers). But it was mostly a bee problem. So, it is not a nuance, not academic. It is real.
This orchard man is just a small business, lost a whole year revenue. If it happens a few more times I assume he will shut down.
Also, as mentioned apples have increased in price well over 100% in maybe 6 years. If small orchards are forced out of business, that will just force prices higher.
Real economic effects, right now. And this can't all be blamed on the Federal Reserve Bank.

Darius Ferlas
03-29-2013, 6:09 PM
Yes, I would sure like to know what the consequences are (how snails reproduce, and the immediate effect on the economy).
Not everything yields instant gratification, but other than that I am with you - can't wait for the results of the research.

Tom Fischer
03-30-2013, 3:34 AM
Not everything yields instant gratification, but other than that I am with you - can't wait for the results of the research.

Somehow my mind is irresistibly drawn to a favorite joke of my dear deceased father-in-law, of Polish decent. :D

Question: "What do you get if you win the Polish Million Dollar Lottery?"
Answer: "A dollar a year for a million years."

Tom Fischer
03-30-2013, 7:34 AM
It's certainly true that money flows to commodities for inflation hedging, but it's not a long-term strategy if the currency doesn't collapse completely, because there are true end users for the commodities and the true end users will still have a supply and demand issues. You can prop up commodities if you'd like, as a store for money in the short term, but if there is a glut of supply the prices will eventually come down. Same as the corn issue described above, once inventory ends up being higher than expected, the bottom drops out of the market.

Very interesting discussion.

As a very casual observer to "AGS" I think the three major cash crops in the U.S. are Wheat, Corn and Soybeans (not necessarily in that order)
As mentioned by David, commodities Wheat and Corn have been volatile, but prices seem to have stayed in a range over the past 10 years.

I was interested in the this discussion for the aspect of bee pollination, certainly not that I want to find it as a true problem, but only to find evidence that it might be.
Phil Thien was very helpful in providing a link to crops that either require bees for pollination, or are assisted by bees (not sure of the distinction)
Anyway, this is the list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...inated_by_bees) that Phil posted.
Neither wheat nor corn appear on the list. And their prices have not advanced consistantly over the past several years.
However, soybeans does appear on the list, and we can see the ever higher price advance of soybeans.
So what's the explanation for beans on a steady price advance (higher highs and higher lows), but not wheat or corn?

(http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$DJASY&p=W&yr=8&mn=0&dy=10&id=p02807992813&a=297631700&listNum=10)Soybean price ranges (weekly) past 7 years (http://http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$DJASY&p=W&yr=8&mn=0&dy=10&id=p02807992813&listNum=10&a=297631700)

Phil Thien
03-30-2013, 9:33 AM
So what's the explanation for beans on a steady price advance (higher highs and higher lows), but not wheat or corn?


Just a quick search seems to indicate the high prices are due to strong global demand.

Output has apparently not suffered except for spot problems due to draught.

David Weaver
03-30-2013, 10:12 AM
Very interesting discussion.

As a very casual observer to "AGS" I think the three major cash crops in the U.S. are Wheat, Corn and Soybeans (not necessarily in that order)
As mentioned by David, commodities Wheat and Corn have been volatile, but prices seem to have stayed in a range over the past 10 years.

I was interested in the this discussion for the aspect of bee pollination, certainly not that I want to find it as a true problem, but only to find evidence that it might be.
Phil Thien was very helpful in providing a link to crops that either require bees for pollination, or are assisted by bees (not sure of the distinction)
Anyway, this is the list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...inated_by_bees) that Phil posted.
Neither wheat nor corn appear on the list. And their prices have not advanced consistantly over the past several years.
However, soybeans does appear on the list, and we can see the ever higher price advance of soybeans.
So what's the explanation for beans on a steady price advance (higher highs and higher lows), but not wheat or corn?

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$DJASY&p=W&yr=8&mn=0&dy=10&id=p02807992813&listNum=10&a=297631700

Beans have fluctuated. Most places that are good to grow beans are also good to grow corn. I don't know what most average yields are for beans, but on our farm, the average yield is probably about 35 bushels and corn averages probably about 110 these days.

If you're going to plant an acre, you've got more nitrogen to put in the soil for corn (how much an acre, I don't know) and probably more seed cost (sorry, I don't know the latter for a fact, the details are up to the renter as long as their check is good and they don't tear up the property). But, if corn is $6 a bushel at the elevator or terminal, wherever you take it, and it's making $660 gross an acre, and beans are at $16 grossing $100 less, I'd be surprised if the difference between the two in inputs wasn't about $100 (our input costs are a little less than someone in the midwest because our land doesn't yield quite as much).

This is what I was talking about earlier with corn pushing beans off fields because of its price and yield. It drives up the bean price then, because people aren't going to plant beans as much in a rotation when corn is so high. If you get lucky after you plant, one or the other does better in the markets because of estimated yields after adjusting for drought and flooding, etc.

I personally think we should all be eating a lot more whole beans (like the pinto beans mentioned above) and a lot less corn and wheat based food. I have never seen anything other than corn, soybeans, wheat, tobacco and maybe a little bit of milo (and not in a long time) planted up where I am. The amish do the tobacco, that's dialed back, too. Marginal ground out by us used to be hay ground if it was permanent, and hay or alfalfa maybe in rotation if there was a dairy demand for the alfalfa, but the mandate and the demand for the corn to waste in cars has just pushed anything that can grow corn to corn ground. And the fert inputs go along with it since nobody does a true rotation any longer. We're on energy-based steroids right now with all of the fert and all of the ethanol distillation, taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another.

At any rate, beans have generally been in the $10 to $17 range for a long time, but more probably because of corn pressure on acres than anything else. Corn has been around $4.50 to $7 something as far as I can recall. Those two ranges are probably a lot alike.

Tom Fischer
03-30-2013, 10:21 AM
OK, but then wheat and corn are NOT at historic highs ... because ... there isn't strong global demand? and they don't suffer from weather problems. too?
I don't follow this stuff closely, but actually seems the biggest demand would be for corn, should be at record highs, ethanol craze and all.
But corn han't made a new high in 5 years, and beans made a new high just this past summer.

Wheat past 7 years (weekly ranges) (http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$DJAWH&p=W&yr=8&mn=0&dy=0&id=p24014993637&a=297638353&listNum=10)


Corn past 7 years (weekly ranges) (http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$DJACN&p=W&yr=7&mn=0&dy=0&id=p41131648328&a=297638392&listNum=10:)

David Weaver
03-30-2013, 10:36 AM
Wheat isn't necessarily a good comparison because it can be grown in places that don't do well for corn. There is some pressure on wheat where dryland wheat is converted to irrigated corn, but the increase in yield for wheat probably offsets it.


Beans and corn are a more direct comparison because most of the places that do well with one do well with the other. I don't know anything about wheat inputs, but I do know that we have seen very little wheat grown on our farm in the last 10 years. I think one of the fields may have been planted once in the last ten years, and that's it. It's not used as a biofuel, and the food needs can probably be met now with higher yields in places where wheat grows well but not much else does.

Corn is awfully high right now. If it isn't higher than you think it should be, it's probably because of supply. There was a while where corn and beans didn't make too much sense together (beans were low compared to corn), but it was probably because people didn't believe the corn market would stay up and going 100% corn presents some risk.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/11/7/saupload_corn.jpg&imgrefurl=http://seekingalpha.com/article/305964-u-s-corn-yields-increased-6-times-since-1930s-and-are-estimated-to-double-by-2030&h=1222&w=1600&sz=136&tbnid=kaMvD50FMBMSuM:&tbnh=76&tbnw=99&zoom=1&usg=__BChjLLVFgyfNdOcyGzBIt6ZiVUc=&docid=f_4ErO2Jg1gUgM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JPlWUeWrCeKT0QGzjoCwAQ&ved=0CEAQ9QEwAzgK&dur=288


Take a look at the corn yields per acre. I'd imagine more acres are in corn than ever were before, too. That probably has something to do with keeping prices down somewhat.

You also have places getting into corn that never had it before, farms in asia, farms in mexico, etc.

Wheat is grown in great amounts in europe and russia, and beans have, for a long time, had a pretty good crop in brazil and I guess other places in south america.

I don't think any of the effects on grain and row crops is a result of the bees or anything that threaten a year without food.

Tom Fischer
03-30-2013, 10:46 AM
At any rate, beans have generally been in the $10 to $17 range for a long time, but more probably because of corn pressure on acres than anything else. Corn has been around $4.50 to $7 something as far as I can recall. Those two ranges are probably a lot alike.

Maybe I am reading this SoyBean Dow Jones subindex chart (http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$DJASY&p=D&yr=2&mn=0&dy=10&id=p31997442179&a=297643084&listNum=10)wrong, but is says beans haven't been under $21.40 in almost a year.

David Weaver
03-30-2013, 11:03 AM
That's probably some other metric, i don't know what it is. They're at about $14.75 a bushel right now - fob at the gulf of mexico. Corn might be kind of high if it's really at about $7, but who knows what's driving that comparison.

Steve Rozmiarek
04-01-2013, 6:17 PM
This is completely off subject, but in case anybody is curious about this sort of thing, our planter has a bit of presence, and I thought you all might be interested in seeing it. I attached a youtube link, it was turned sideways, but is supposedly being fixed, so...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp9Cp15BmMc

David Weaver
04-01-2013, 9:55 PM
Nice. Do you use that to plant pinto beans? What else will it do?

Phil Thien
04-01-2013, 10:01 PM
our planter has a bit of presence

Love that 8360RT!

David Weaver
04-01-2013, 10:05 PM
I can hardly follow the numbers these days. Did the 60 series replace the 30 series? What about 40,50?

Steve Rozmiarek
04-02-2013, 12:41 AM
We use it to plant sugar beets, corn, pinto and northern beans. I can hardly keep up with the numbers either, now I'm going to get this wrong...:o The 30 was actually replaced by the R series. The 360 is the horsepower, the T is track. 8360RT=360hp, 8000 series size frame, tracked tractor. We have a couple of these, new this year. Always have a couple tracked tractors around to go with the others, but to have two new ones on the farm is a new thing for us.

For the curious, the planter is a 36 row 30" spaced, CCS. 90' wide.

I think it's amazing how fast the industry is changing. I'm not that old, and in my lifetime, pretty much every aspect of farming has changed. Phil's original question may have had a different answer as little as 30 years ago, in my opinion. For better or worse, no turning back now!

David Weaver
04-02-2013, 11:12 AM
Ahh..... a numbering system that has some logical sense to it. Never thought I would see it in my lifetime! When our farm went to rent, the biggest machine on it was 125 horsepower. There wasn't a whole lot much bigger around here back then, unless someone was doing custom work.

And now, there's odd niches like the guy who did the combining for us up to last year, he owns a combine and runs it all fall. I'm not sure he even has any of his own ground. All of the money in the price levels since 2007 or 2008 has really created a lot of quirky operators (and a lot of happy land owners).

David Weaver
04-02-2013, 11:15 AM
Ahh..... a numbering system that has some logical sense to it. Never thought I would see it in my lifetime! When our farm went to rent, the biggest machine on it was 125 horsepower. There wasn't a whole lot much bigger around here back then, unless someone was doing custom work.

And now, there's odd niches like the guy who did the combining for us up to last year, he owns a combine and runs it all fall. I'm not sure he even has any of his own ground. All of the money in the price levels since 2007 or 2008 has really created a lot of quirky operators (and a lot of happy land owners).

Steve Rozmiarek
04-02-2013, 12:41 PM
LOL! Give them time David, I bet they can screw up the new numbering system...

It's interesting to hear you talk about your farm, completely different area, but the story is the very similar on several of my landlord's places.

Andrew Joiner
04-02-2013, 3:33 PM
This is completely off subject, but in case anybody is curious about this sort of thing, our planter has a bit of presence, and I thought you all might be interested in seeing it. I attached a youtube link, it was turned sideways, but is supposedly being fixed, so...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp9Cp15BmMc

Wow Steve. Just looking at that planter says how much farming is about numbers. How many acres does it take for a machine like that to earn it's keep?

Larry Frank
04-02-2013, 7:23 PM
The current US corn inventory is at 4.339 billion bushels with the 2012 production of around 10.8 billions bushels. The forecast number of acres to be planted in 2013 is around 98 million acres.

Steve Rozmiarek
04-02-2013, 9:36 PM
Wow Steve. Just looking at that planter says how much farming is about numbers. How many acres does it take for a machine like that to earn it's keep?

It varies in different places I suppose, on my farm I need it to cover about 5000 acres. Because we have to irrigate everything here, our costs are higher, so I would guess the answer would be about half of that in the "corn belt".

Larry, the numbers you mentioned sure scared the bejeebers out of the market.

Luis Tian
04-26-2013, 10:38 AM
Don't worry Phil, most countries have emegency food storage.

Phil Thien
04-26-2013, 5:28 PM
Don't worry Phil, most countries have emegency food storage.

Really? I've heard of strategic petroleum reserves, but not food.

Tom Fischer
05-09-2013, 8:05 AM
Here is a list of plants that require bees:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees



Nearly a Third of America´s
Bee Colonies Died Over the Winter (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/bee-colony-collapse-disorder-chart/65032/)
Atlantic, by Philip Bump

David Weaver
05-09-2013, 8:09 AM
There's an almond grower on one of the forums I read, and he hasn't expressed any concern about bees. Looks pretty average. But why neonicotinoid pesticides are still legal is beyond me....we have some of the dumbest and slowest agencies in the world when it comes to fixing problems. It seems they'd rather implement more paperwork instead of solving real issues.

Phil Thien
05-09-2013, 8:23 AM
There's an almond grower on one of the forums I read, and he hasn't expressed any concern about bees. Looks pretty average. But why neonicotinoid pesticides are still legal is beyond me....we have some of the dumbest and slowest agencies in the world when it comes to fixing problems. It seems they'd rather implement more paperwork instead of solving real issues.

Europe is taking an intelligent approach in that they are instituting a temporary ban on neonicotinoids on crops attractive to bees. This will allow the results to be studied, and a larger, more sweeping ban to be instituted (or not) depending on the results.

Stateside, no intelligence demonstrated.

Mel Fulks
05-09-2013, 10:38 AM
The thinking in Washington is that if we kill off the bees and increase Q-tip production we can come close to full employment.

David Weaver
05-09-2013, 10:48 AM
Hopefully, the 3d printers will be able to print bees if euros find even more proof about neonicotinoids and we still aren't sharp enough to get rid of them.