Coffee read this morning. High crop prices 2021
Farmer – Economist Michael Smith talks crop prices, Will History Repeat Itself?, AG WEB Farm Journal, Jerry Gulke
High crop prices, like much what is going on in the greater economy might be transitory.
The author keeps up the tone that high prices in the silage department usually only last a few months. We are seeing this with lumber. We should see this in corn as well. I would venture to even go out on a limb and posit that climate change might actually drive up prices infinitely. As drought sets in the great plains and Midwest, farmers are scrambling to find the next big solution of further drought tolerance. More at the Farm Journal.
Chlorophyll and photosynthesis are affected by temperature. Too hot isn’t good. If the temperature is too high during daylight hours, your production will decline. This will start to effect crop yields on top of draught, flood and all the usual disrupters of agricultural production. Will we be able to solve this problem before we get famines? Did we ever stop having famines in some parts of the world?
High prices are the least of my concerns for agriculture in the future.
Not really true. Tranpisration is why crops droop during heat. We have to put way more water on seedlings during this time to keep them alive. Our water melons that we started late are well on their way with an abundance of additional watering and we just started the pumpkin patch this past week during a heat wave. We lost more crop to pests than heat. Mostly because we treated the ground for fertilizer and also watered from an irrigation pond that has been fermenting algae and other organics since March. Pests we have just kind of ignored. Actually, the higher the temp due to sun exposure the more seed have come up. In the past, one tray of 24 seeds would produce 12-16 plants, now with the excess heat and sunlight, we are at 24-26, but water is an issue. We have to keep everything moist 3-4 times a day, but our seeding quality has never been this good. We are now 3 weeks ahead of most. But at what price? We will find out.
Man you are too good. I wrote that little piece waiting for a load out at the feed store. Yall are amazing.
Michael:
I was hoping you could flesh that one out a bit more. I think we are in for some harder times with the way the temperatures are going. That has to impact crop pricing even more than what we have seen.
It was very worthy of a post. no one is writing on farm economics. You have a wide open door on this topic,