What scares you most, terrorists, war or economic uncertainty. Outside favourite FAMINE.

While the US is suffering some freaky weather some are staying in enjoying the AC. Some are swimming. Some are looking at fields that should be green and lush but are all ready looking brown and tired.

Reports from farmers are coming in that at this crucial time in the corn growth cycle (pollination) the outlook is not good.

After a bumper crop last year market expectations were high. Early indications show that unless the weather patterns change very soon crops will start failing at a very high rate.

Current estimates by federal bodies rate at least a fifth of all US corn as being in a poor-very poor state.




The current drought monitor from last thursday is not looking good to say the least. Next update will be released this thursday.

Is it too late. No, but unless sufficient rainfall occurs in the next couple of weeks the US could be looking at a countrywide failure in the corn crop.

What would this mean. Food prices will rocket. Nearly half of the corn crop is used as cattle feed, so meat prices will increase as the cost of corn rises.

As much as a quarter of the crop is used in ethanol production. This will impact on industrial processes, again increasing price of associated production.

Discounting all meat, dairy and poultry that consumes corn there are not many products on supermarket shelves that dont contain corn in some form or another.

Add all this to an already shaky economy and the outlook is not good.

Thoughts and further information welcomed.

Look to the skies people.

reply to post by murch


Most nations have a stockpile of essentials, a reserve. I think we had a similar thing occur in the UK a few years ago, I can't remember what it was that was affected, but everything was stable despite the hype and panic for about a week in the news. I wouldn't worry about this until you actually see evidence of it.

Personally, the thing I fear most right now is the economic collapse, but that's because we're right there are the edge of the cliff. When that happens and I adjust to it I'll be scared of war.

The way I see it, the economic collapse will come first, then war is a real probability as states blame each other, become protectionist and begin grabbing for what they can get from each other - by force rather than by trade.

This won't be the people of course, this will be the elite banksters and "captains of industry" who want to keep their monopoly game going and no longer have legal or corrupt routes to use. Instead, they'll force their puppet governments to send in the cannon fodder, then they'll walk over the bodies of the dead to grab their oil field, their mine or their occupied city of slave workers.

Some further info from a reuters article posted on an insurance journal website

www.insurancejournal.com...

“By Sunday or Monday if we don’t get rain here we will be losing anywhere between 7 to 9 percent of our yield potential,” said Roger Elmore, corn agronomist at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. “If it drags on into next week, it is going to be worse.”

Mike Hutjens, University of Illinois professor of animal sciences, said corn plants, especially in the southern third of the state, are showing irremediable stress from the heat and drought. “Corn plants are firing from the roots up the stalk of the corn plant,” he said, meaning stalks are drying out. “Some corn has tasseled, which may not pollinate, resulting in barren corn stalks” with no ears of corn. Agronomists said calls by farmers for crop insurance claims continued to rise this week, and the worst is far from over for both farmers and consumers, as well as corn processors and exporters worried about supplies and soaring grain prices.

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reply to post by detachedindividual


Good point about reserves. I didn't think of that so have went and had a quick check and found some more good news.

www.bloomberg.com...

Corn inventories in the U.S., the world’s biggest grower and exporter, were down 7.9 percent on March 1 from a year earlier, the government said. Wheat supplies fell 16 percent, while soybeans reserves rose. Corn stockpiles on March 1 totaled 6.009 billion bushels, down from 6.523 billion a year earlier and the lowest for that time of year since 2004, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a report. Analysts in a Bloomberg survey expected 6.16 billion, on average. “It’s going to be a tight supply situation until farmers begin harvesting this year’s crops,” Marty Foreman, an economist for Doane Advisory Services Co. in St. Louis, said before the report. “We still need to grow a good crop this year to rebuild inventories.”

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Economic collapse.

With economic collapse ... everything stops. Everything. No more MEDICINE. Some of us are totally depended upon the medicine to make it through the day. I hate it, but there is nothing I can do about it. If I couldn't get my plaquinel I'd jump off a bridge. (seriously). Chronic pain and neurological problems without medication??? No thanks. People would then start dying from the 'simple' things because of no antibiotics ... the death rates of children would skyrocket to that of the pioneer days

So I say .. economic collapse is the most frightening to me.

Famine does not scare me.. we have an abundance of food here on our farm.

Rising gas prices... nope, I work 17miles from my home and my wife is now working here on the farm to turn it into a full time operation... breeding, markeing, stuff like that.

Droughts and global warming.... it has happened before, will happen again... as a farmer you come to expect the worst and adapt...and always diversify. Corn feed for my pigs goes up... I do like last year and grow fields of turnips... they loved them and cut my costs in half... plus we eat them too... greens and beans. The goats.. we just turn them out into the woods and let them forage.

Economic collapse... we will just string up the barbed wire, barter with the neighbors and see what lands where...

What scares me most...is my own government really infringing on my rights and I have to take up arms against her... I don't like to fight, but I will. Stuff like in Michigan... killing my hogs or dawn light raids on Amish Farmers for selling raw milk. I have a real problem with authority and someone telling me what to do... just my nature.

I am a live and let live kind of guy... you conservative or liberal...OK. Gay or straight... that's your business... but shoot my pigs or tell me I have to do this, that, and the other.... not so good.