Farmers are cheering on the 92 million acres they planted into nature's little ethanol plants, corn. It's been a battle all season from mud to flood and drought to microwave oven, but we have a crop, we just don't know how good or how bad it really is.
Agribusiness Weekly showed this study today and I thought I would look it up and post it for all of my corn using buddies, yes that is every one of you!
"This report updates the findings in Du and Hayes 2009 by extending the data to December 2010 and concludes that over the sample period from January 2000 to December 2010, the growth in ethanol production reduced wholesale gasoline prices by $0.25 per gallon on average.
The Midwest region experienced the biggest impact, with a $0.39/gallon reduction, while the East Coast had the smallest impact at $0.16/gallon. Based on the data of 2010 only, the marginal impacts on gasoline prices are found to be substantially higher given the much higher ethanol production and crude oil prices. The average effect increases to $0.89/gallon and the regional impact ranges from $0.58/gallon in the East Coast to $1.37/gallon in the Midwest.
In addition, we report on a related analysis that asks what would happen to US gasoline prices if ethanol production came to an immediate halt. Under a very wide range of parameters, the estimated gasoline price increase would be of historic proportions, ranging from 41% to 92%."
How about them apples! What do you think of that? I will let you re-read and simmer on that awhile.
Meanwhile, the heat has won some of the battle. A farmer in nearby Northern Kentucky posted a picture of an ear of one of his Pioneer hybrids. You can see it is missing a LOT of kernals. Less kernals for food, feed, or fuel. Why did that happen?
I believe it got hot enough to kill the pollen in the ovule or the tassle and the silk to leave all those kernal spots blank. Planting date, location and hybrid varies from across the country to across the fenceline! There could be 200 bu corn in the field next door but this field will hump to make 50 bu.
It was hot enough to disturb the pollen flow yesterday during our trip the big Ross County Fair. We had a great time visiting with Scott Metzger and son and seeing the fair but it was hot enough we could only handle a couple of hours. You have never seen so many campers at one fairground. I said there must be 50 acres of campers and Scott said I don't doubt it but there are 1400 campers who paid $200 for a full hookup! Now there is a fairboard who knows how to make money, they only charge $4 at the gate and now we know why! Every parent and grandparent must attend because I swear every child in the county had an entry of their school work or 4-H or FFA project!
That's it for today. I think I gave you plenty of fodder to chew on!
Ed
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