Demographics
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Hog Plant Closing = Higher Hog Prices?
Does the recent announced closing of the hog plant located in Sioux City, Iowa mean that hog prices will increase during 2010. First, the closing will directly impact 1,500 workers and their families in the area. Some of them may find work at other plants located in the area, but many will need to find […]
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Rural Broadband – Catching up to Urban Broadband?
Sort of like the photo of my motorcycle at the left, broadband Internet services are much faster than dial up (or in my case a Harley). Historically, the utilization of broadband Internet services in the rural sector has been much lower than urban areas. In an article in the September, 2009 Amber Waves , several […]
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Farm Debt Levels Are Increasing
All in all, farm debt levels have increased, however, farmers have done a very good job of not letting these levels get out of control. The United States Department of Agriculture has a very good print and online magazine called Amber Waves. Each issue generally has several good articles related to farming and I would […]
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Will Farmers Reduce Production
Agriculture Online has a good quick article on whether farmers will reduce their production levels in 2010 due to the large crop that was grown in 2009. Corn has rallied about a $1 since early September and soybeans have gone up about $2. However, the government report on Tuesday led to limit down price moves […]
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Top-Third vs. Bottom-Third
The Kansas State University Department of Agricultural Economics periodically produces a recap of the high 1/3, mid 1/3 and low 1/3 of various farms in their state. They just released the latest analysis for corn, sorghum, wheat, soybeans and alfalfa for the three years 2006-2008. The total number of crop farms reporting for all three […]
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Good Farmland in Iowa Down 7% Year-over-Year
The most recent AgLetter from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago indicated that good farm land in Iowa decreased about 7 percent from the third quarter of 2008. The average decrease for the five state region was 4%. The good news that the price of good farm land increased by 2% over the second quarter […]
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Monsanto = Monopoly?????
I have read several articles about the Department of Justice possibly looking into anti-trust concerns regarding the concentration of seed genetic traits by Monsanto. Many experts believe that Monsanto uses their supplier contracts with other seed companies to unlawfully constrain competition in the seed industry. Over the last 12 years, Monsanto has gone from having almost […]
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How Many Tons of Stuff do we Produce
The USDA just recently produced their Crop Production report for 2009. Being a stats nut, I always like to look through the report. This time, I thought I would share with you the total amount of food that the US produces in metric tons. Lots of food items are counted in bushels, bales, tons, etc. […]
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Corporate Farms in Africa
In the latest issue of Business Week magazine is a very good article on the farm land rush that is occurring in Africa and other under-developed countries around the world. There are many issues surrounding these investments in third word farming enterprises. Although it may provide jobs for these people, it also is disturbing the […]
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How’s the Local Economy
I was at a local two hour seminar this morning on how the banking and real estate economies are doing. Our area here is very much like most of my readers I am presuming. It is very much agriculturally based and when the boom times in the housing market in 2002-2006 were going on, we […]