Corn/Soybean Farmers

[farmerdoug]

I raise vegetables.  I have never signed up for the farm program.  They have little to offer vegeable growers but their nosiness.  If you raise vegtables on a piece of land then it is not acceptable for the corn/bean programs.  If you are in the program you have to go by their rules or you lose your money.  I sell hundreds of dozens of sweet corn a week, that is where my money comes from.  My meat comes from the deer that feed in the fields all summer.  If I had to raise the regular crops such as corn and beans I would quit farming.  The government does not need to know everything.  We rent land to a guy who does the program.  It is cash rent, the rest is his problems. 

Doug

[Tom_Averwater]

The biggest farmer around here  is doing close to 20,000 acres of beans, corn and wheat. I heard today he got a govt. check for about  $ 1,000,000. last year. He keeps buying land , 600 acres that I know of last year.  My father-in law saw them in a big field with 6 combines the other day . Tom

[redpowerd]

http://www.ewg.org/farm/

farm subsidy database.

before anyone clicks here, i gotta warn ya, the website is VERY liberal, read with discretion. the database itself is quite liberal.

[SwampDonkey]

Wow, some of those farms might as well be renamed into charitable donation committees ;D

[Patty]

Whenever my brother in law farmer gets kidded about all the government supports he just laughs and pulls off his seed cap, shows folks how nicely curved the bill is, and says, " I keep a nice curve in it for when I scoop all those checks out of the mailbox. It works great as a catcher's mit."  ;D

[Corley5]

I haven't grown any corn on here in five years but last year because I have an established corn base I had a payment direct deposited to my checking account.  It was a payment related to crop loss due to weather and even though I didn't have any corn I got paid 8)  This year I'm also getting a crop loss payment for hay for 03 and 04 8)  I've got a meeting scheduled this week to meet with the local NRCS fella to go over some programs that the feds will pay me to enact here on the farm including some TSI work, shelter belts, nutrient management etc.  If the govt wants to give me money I'm not gonna say no.  I see my tax dollars being burned up all the world : and am more than happy to get some of them back to use here at home

[farmerdoug]

The biggest farm around here is the Peters Bros.  They farm 30,000 acres in a corn, wheat, soybean rotation.   They ran five combines last year.  They use only John Deere equipment.  They buy two tractors and two combines a year.  They own 4-5000 acres and rent the rest.  Their combines run 35 foot grain platforms and 12 row corn heads.  They are quite a sight to see in action when planting and harvesting.  :-\ They have their own trucks tillage equipment, sprayers, etc.  But they have made it hard for the smaller farmers to get land to rent and they are hard on the land.  They work in the fields wet or dry, which they have to with the acres they cover.  But working the fields wet leads to compaction and it is very visible in the fields they have worked for several years now.  They pay top rent but I will not lease to them because the dollar means nothing if they damage the soil for the long run. ;)

As far as the support, I see no problem with it if you want to jump through their hoops but if the farm bill is cut back big time I will not shed a tear for the farmers that have come to rely  on it. :

Farmerdoug

[SwampDonkey]

If you want to continue having cheap food than you better support the farmers. I will say though that those kinds of subsidies are unheard of in New Brunswick. One exception would be distaster releif where everyone as a group gets cheques and that only happens once in ten years on average. Nobody gets hay and straw subsidies, soil and conservation subsidies unheard of. They do get subsidies for land clearing here, but the cost is double compared to conventional clearing methods.

[Faron]

A farm became available for rent here  this spring. One of those megafarm outfits met with the owner, bringing along a couple of lawyers and accountants.  They were supposed to have made the statement," We intend to farm 20,000 acres, and we don't much care how we get it."  That didn't set well with the owner, and they didn't get any of his land.   8) 8)  This outfit set up multiple corporations, and a couple of the corporations went bankrupt recently.  Do you suppose there was any transfer of assets before bankruptcy? >:(   FarmerDoug has it right about the misuse of land when they force themselves into a situation where they have to get on wet land because they are farming too much DanG land.   If that is what it takes to farm, I'd just druther not.

[SW_IOWA_SAWYER]

I have a small farm that I grow soybeans and corn. I think my cost last year for corn was approx $ 113.00 an acre to plant corn. My yield last year was close to 200 bushels per acre. You won't become a millionaire but you can make a living with enough acres. Remember most farmers have no house payment as they live on the farm house on the farm. Don't start on the goverment handouts, they pay because they want to control the price of grain. Try working all year growing a crop and have the goverment decide to embargo. They manipulate the price of grain for many reasons, most farmers have little or no control of what price they get. The goverment keeps food cheap to keep all us folks happy cause you get cheap food and have full belly. It keeps your mind off of all of the things going on around you. You can't blame the farmer for using the system the goverment sets up as they have no control and really no choice.

[Faron]

The statistics on that website are a little misleading.  They are big on saying that the biggest x% gets y% of the money, which is true.  However, most every landowner who share rents a piece of property gets the a share of the payments.  So there are lots of landowners on there who own and rent out a few acres, and get a few dollars in government payment. They are the bulk of the folks who the enviro group complains get only a small payment. These aren't people trying to farm.        On the other hand, some of the big partnerships don't sign up as one big company.  They sign up as individuals, and their wives as well.  That way they evade the payment limits. >:(

[Gary_C]

I raise corn, soybeans, and alfalfa and have been in the farm program for many years. As far as making money, last year I sold my beans on Feb 5 at $8.365 per bushel and I see from my notes that beans hit $10.36 on April 5. In a good year our yeilds will be 50-55 bushels and the production costs including land rent will not be much over $200 per acre. The government program on beans is essentially nothing. So you can make money if the weather cooperated and you are a good marketeer of your products. Like Bro Noble I also have a few dairy cows and got my check for about $10 for that farm program. As far as payments for corn, I don't recall much if any because the govt had to take back money from the previous year because the crop prices were above the targets. I should also note the date for the final farm program payment is the end of October each year so that your local congressmen can take credit for that money just days before each election.

I agree with SW IOWA SAWYER that our government has always had a cheap food policy and the farm program payments are only enough to allow the government to control the prices. With the latest farm bill and the new countercyclical payment formula, they have in some years advanced one half of the projected payment and then required repayment later. Trust me, the farm program payments are not a significant income source, they are only a safety net for poor crop years.

Also you cannot always believe the governments numbers on farm program payments. For example most farmers in the program take out marketing loans to avoid selling at depressed prices at harvest time and believe me those LOANS are repayed in 9 months. However the convoluted govt accounting system counts this money as farm program payments and then the repayment is just counted as general revenue just like your taxes. It is not credited back to the USDA against the program costs. Also, the USDA budget contains all the money for food stamps. If you have ever driven into Washington DC the first huge govt  building you see is the USDA Headquarters. Don't ever believe they send all of their budgeted money out of that building.

All this talk about big government payments to farmers reminds me of the time one of the senate ag comittee chairmen, I think it was Stenholm of Texas, put up a bar chart of the federal budget by departments and pointed out the entire ag dept budget was only the width if the line between the Defense Dept and HUD.

Back in March of 1998, at the urging of a former Senator, I testified at one of four Federal Milk Marketing Reform Hearings in Green Bay, WI. Before I went I got a copy of the the complete proposal and it was over 800 pages and two inches thick. I drove one dark rainy night, at my own expense, and got my five minutes late in the afternoon. When it was over, they provided transcripts of all the testimony and then the USDA wrote new rules for an outdated, incomprehensible system that rewarded dairy farmers based on how far away they lived from Eau Claire, WI. They actually made some meaningful reforms in the final proposal that was submitted to a vote of all dairy farmers. In spite of the fact that some large dairy coops opposed the reform and block voted (denying their own members the right to vote individually) against the proposal, IT PASSED. However, Senator Lehey from Vermont attached an ammendment to some other bill that threw out the whole order reform that was approved by the majority of farmers in order to protect his Northeast Dairy Compact. Talk about a waste of money. It's hard to imagine how much that whole process cost the taxpayers. I was going to send my congressman a bill for my travel expenses, but it would have just a waste of more time.

Oh, by the way, my milk checks do not come from, nor are they subsidized by the government. The federal order system was actually written back in the 1930"s to protect the dairy farmers from abusive processors that took advantage of the perishible nature of the milk they produced to avoid paying a fair price. It has now evolved into a protection mechanism for the processors that are now mostly large and supposedly farmer owned coops.

Sorry if I took more than five minutes for this rant. I just hope it is worth more than the last time when I got just five and a bell sounded.

[redpowerd]

However, Senator Lehey from Vermont attached an ammendment to some other bill that threw out the whole order reform that was approved by the majority of farmers in order to protect his Northeast Dairy Compact. Talk about a waste of money.

>:( >:(he dosent care and neither do the ppl that voted for him. >:( >:(
thanks for putting up a fight, gary.

[Kirk_Allen]

Time for a harvest update!  Our farmer cut beans yesterday and what a learning experience it was.  He is our tenant farmer but he hired out the planting and the combining this year. 

A mega outfit from north of us came in and with two combines cut 100 acres of beans in 3 hrs 15 min.   
They had 24 row heads on these beasts and lets just say it was awsome to see. 

Now for the real joy!  On the low land portion of the field they yeilded 89 BUSHEL per acre 8) 8) 8) 8) 8).  On the top of the hill area they got 40 Bushel per acre.  Overall this year we yeilded 62 bushel an acre.   8) 8) 8) 

That is a record for this place.  When I asked my farmer what he contributed it to since we had a drought year he said he has no explanation.  The combine operator said he knew.  "Go find a soy bean in that field.  If you can fill the cup of you hand in 100 yards I'll by dinner. That machine is like nothing I have ever used to cut beans.  It gets them all!"

WOW.  I was shocked to see how efficient that cutter was.  You had to really look to find a soybean on the ground. 

Turns out it was cheaper for our farmer to contract the combining than for him to do it himself.  With higher efficency equipment, faster equipment, and less overall fuel costs he said we come out WAY ahead from previous years.  That same field two years ago, which was supposed to be a banner year yeilded 45 bushel on beans. 

[Patty]

So what combine was he using, Kirk, to eliminate so much waste? Or did he just have new bean heads? I am very curious to know..

[SwampDonkey]

I think someone has to plug the holes in the neighbor's combine. They cut the oats 2 weeks ago and now I'm seeing a windrow of oat seed germinating in every swoth. I'll take a picture to post. :D :D

[farmerdoug]

That is the way some wheat fields look around here.  If they used a straw chopper and spreader it looks like it was planted as the new wheat carpets the field.  In the spring I wonder why they even work the fields.  I think that some of them could get great yields off the volunteer wheat. :

Farmerdoug

[Jason_WI]

It.s not the color of the machine that is at fault, it is the operator.  Not matter what color the machine is they are all designed to work.  Usually going too DanG fast will push the grain off the sieves and right out the back.

Jason

[Kirk_Allen]

Patty it was a Case 8010 with the new monster head that Case has.  

Dads north farm got 65 bushel an acre on beans to day 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)

[farmerdoug]

Our renting farmer has cut half of the land we rent him and he told me he is running beween 65-70 bushels per acre.  It is tiled ground but we had a fairly dry summer here though.

Farmerdoug

[SwampDonkey]

 :D :D :D :D farmerdoug, if you seen these 'farmers' work you'd wonder, like anyone else around here, how they keep above board. Like a bunch of school kids without supervision. :D :D :D :D

The field up the road they were renting, they had windrowed and left some sections of unharvested potatoes. Something my father would never do, and he farmed for over 40 years. The guy that owns the land was up with the kids and wife and picken wasted taters.  ;D

The last few days in this nice weather they did nothing but  'bleep' the dog all day.  : :

[Patty]

Thanks Kirk. I hear the Case IH makes a good combine. They are popular around here , just as the JD's are. A couple years ago when price checking these two, the Case was even more pricey than the JD's.     The dollars can make your head spin!

Congratulations on a good harvest.  ;)

[farmerdoug]

SD, there may be a method to their madness.  It is common practice to lift and windrow all of the potatoes around.  If you do not need them all you just let them lay on top of the ground and freeze.  It is not a good idea to leave them in the ground as if they do not freeze then you will have volunteers next year that will carry the late blight and other diseases over from last year.  So it is considered a good sanitation to leave them on the top of the ground.  Although around here the deer will clean them up long before they get a chance to freeze though. :D :D

Farmerdoug

[floyd]

Jason, check from gov is my tax dollars.call it what you want. I call it welfare. If one cannot farm & make enough to make it maybe  another vocation should be tried.

No one gave the loggers welfare when the mills shut down & I still see houses being built with wood.

[SwampDonkey]

 :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Here's my big subsidy cheque. ;D Actually, Goods and Services Tax rebate. I always figured the government concocted this tax to create more government jobs so loggers and farmers have to hire accountants to keep track of it all.  Has nothing to do with the prosperity of the country, just proves that the DanG government is collecting more tax than they know what to do with. : On the news last night the Fed Government said they have a tax surplus and they are sending out rebates, this is in addition to these cheques, like below, we get every 4 months.  :