August 02, 2019 6:14 PM ET
High corn prices have made U.S. farmers look for low-cost substitutes for livestock feed including crops from South America, day-old bakery products and expired pet food.
A historic spring corn planting delay has driven up local prices of corn, which is used to feed hogs, cattle and poultry, forcing farmers to seek alternatives including outdated baked goods, Reuters reported.
“We’re already starting to ration our corn out,” said Jim Heimerl, an Ohio farmer who sells 700,000 pigs per year. Heimerl has recently started using pet food in place of corn.
“It’s only going to get worse and it’s all because of the weather,” he added.
Usually the highest cost of raising farm animals, finding substitute feed has been critical for producers looking to keep prices for agricultural products competitive in the $150 billion U.S. meat and dairy industry.(RELATED: Rural America Is Going Bust As Farm Bankruptcies Soar)
Farmers have incorporated substitutes including dry pet food that is outdated or mislabeled and recycled bakery products like breads, cakes and other sweets to reduce their dependence on corn.
“The bushels that are here are precious,” said Minnesota farmer Randy Spronk, who has started replacing 10% of his hogs’ meals with crushed baked goods he buys from ReConserve, which recycles bakery, cereal grain and snack foods.
“We’re trying to make them last as long as we can,” Spronk said.
Foreign corn is another option farmers have explored. Prestage Farms, based in North Carolina, said it has fed hogs imported corn from Brazil.
“We are looking everywhere to minimize the impact of high priced corn,” owner John Prestage told Reuters.
How do farmers transport their cows? In a mooooving van. That was an udderly brilliant idea.Nothing cowardly about that!
Thank God we still have ethanol in our fuel.
No insult meant, but is this not a glorious name for a breeder of pigs Minnesota? “….farmer Randy Spronk …”
It reminds me of a girl I met in my teens, surname “Nollege”, parents’ choice of first name “Carmel”.
‘A historic spring corn planting delay..’ hmmm… what could have caused that?
Is it this?
‘All across the farm belt record-breaking precipitation has been causing headaches for farmers with flooding of fields and excess soil moisture.’
https://eu.wisfarmer.com/story/news/2019/06/02/crop-planting-delays-reach-historic-levels-2019/1325696001/
Well, that is climate change. Not some random variation.
See also:
https://weather.com/news/weather/news/2019-05-14-one-of-longest-lived-mississippi-river-floods-since-great-flood-1927
ctm. pearls bevor swine.
“Usually the highest cost of raising farm animals, finding substitute feed has been critical for producers looking to keep prices for agricultural products competitive in the $150 billion U.S. meat and dairy industry.
(RELATED: Rural America Is Going Bust As Farm Bankruptcies Soar)”
ctm,
“Farm Bankruptcies” may stem from competition.
Neither from “prices for agricultural products” nor from “It’s only going to get worse and it’s all because of the weather,” he added.
There may be a roll for Extinction Rebellion protesters to play here..
Where I am in the vicinity of Toronto, we had a bad spring but right now the corn looks amazing.
Isn’t this an entirely sensible idea?
This isn’t news; it’s olds. People have been doing this forever.
When I were a boy we had swill bins by the school kitchen and everything we didn’t eat got scraped into them and sent to local piggeries….
Have they blamed the planting delay on “climate change” yet?
I wrote these posts ~7 years ago – still true.
The url’s are obsolete and should be updated but are close.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/05/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-57/#comment-1054427
Time to End the Fuel Ethanol Mandate
Re: the Forbes article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/31/the-ethanol-mandate-drought-only-compounds-inherent-catastrophic-consequences/
With corn prices increasing to over $8 per bushel, it is surely time to end the ridiculous fuel ethanol mandate in the USA (and Canada). Almost 40% of the huge US corn crop is used for corn ethanol.
This food-to-fuel folly has driven up the cost of food worldwide, causing great suffering to the world’s poor – now poor AND HUNGRY.
This ethanol policy was energy-nonsense from the beginning – but now it is causing increased world hunger.
Oh, sorry, my bad – I forgot that these hungry people are all poor, so they don’t matter, apparently.
Apologies, Allan
________
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/29/canada-yanks-some-climate-change-programs-from-budget/#comment-939257
Excerpt:
In North America, our greatest folly has been corn ethanol. Now, almost 40% of the huge US crop is used for corn ethanol – about 130 million tonnes per year of corn goes into our gas tanks, forced into gasoline by government mandates. This folly has driven up the cost of food worldwide, at great cost to the world’s poor.
Grid-connected wind power, solar power and corn ethanol all require huge life-of-project subsidies to survive, and would go bankrupt the minute these subsidies cease. Many of the subsidies are in the form of mandates – forcing power companies and gasoline suppliers to include these costly and counterproductive enviro-schemes in their products, at great expense to consumers.
The radical environmentalists have been remarkably effective at forcing really foolish, costly and counterproductive schemes upon Western society. The backlash, when it comes, won’t be pretty.
When you hear the term “green energy”, it’s not about greening the environment – it’s all about the money.
As the Dalton Minimum runs its course, there will be many incidents of near-disaster in agriculture. Even though its expected that the average temperature will only drop a few degrees, the standard deviation around the average will be exciting. And scary.
The global warming alarmists predicted future failure of the grain crop due to the climate becoming hotter and dryer – but it got colder and wetter.
Time for these radical leftists to retrench and re-group – and come up with an even better falsehood, preferably a Non-Falsifiable Hypothesis:
“IT’S CLIMATE CHANGE, I TELL YA – HOTTER, COLDER, WETTER, DRIER, IT’S ALL CAUSED BY THAT DEMON CO2!!!”
I posted the following in 2016. I’m tired of being correct – think I’ll post something deliberately wrong, just for the heck of it!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/04/claim-500000-extra-deaths-per-year-from-malnutrition-by-2050/comment-page-1/#comment-2159294
Agree Mark – and I think we are due for global cooling, probably starting before 2020. I hope to be wrong..
The one possible mitigating factor is the ~40% of the USA corn crop devoted to biofuels and the ~36% devoted to animal feed – one assumes this land could be seeded in sweet corn suitable for human consumption.
Never heard of feeding cows dog&cat food, pigs would love it. I know and have known farmers who use expired baked goods and produce to feed cattle, no big thing and not new at all.
Seeing as corn and other crops are going to be down this season in America perhaps it is time for an EO putting a moratorium on corn use for fuel, say for 3 years. At the end re-evaluate its use in fuels period.
Stupid premise for the article. Feeders always look for cheaper sources of feed stock for their herds. They often use candy to sweeten silage for cows. Yes corn has rallied but there is only regional shortages of corn, east and south east, as the rest of the cornbelt is still holding plenty, before the spring planting issues corn carryout was projected at 2.2 BILLION bushels and was weighing heavily on corn prices. Since then China lost maybe 50% of its swine herd and therefore the need for Soymeal and Corn used to feed them, the rest of Asia is also infected with African Swine Flu and having to cull herds which further reduces demand for US corn. South America has increased production to take advantage of the US/China trade war, further cutting US export demand. The only way the US has a corn issue is if the late crop gets an early frost, mid Sep full moon, which could cut the crop back further and reduce the crop and carry out to 1.1 Billion bushels which would be somewhat tight for corn stocks.
Idk, Cheze-its fed pork has a ring to it. Well at least the pigs get a change in the menu.
This is much ado about nothing. There appears to be plenty of alternatives and farmers are making the necessary adjustments to feed their animals. I’m sure the price of pork will go up a bit but it’s already very low cost. Typical Reuter’s story complete with hand wringing.
Idea for a Josh ‘toon: Two stereotypical farmers shooting the breeze, one chewing on a stalk of straw. The other has a cannister labeled “corn ethanol” which he is in the process of pouring into the pig’s (or cow’s) chow, saying”I hear it also helps keep them from freezing up in the winter time”.
Farmers have been feeding their cows and pigs and chickens left-overs for more than two thousand years. They’ve done it commercially for nearly 20 years across the US and there’s one guy outside Vegas who barely has to buy his pigs anything anymore.
Let them eat cake! And cookies, and pies and…
Our ethanol policies are misguided and serve no purpose other than reward big agribusiness and to preserve viability in the Iowa caucuses. Remove Iowa as the earliest primary contest and these policies will soon be abolished.
Let them eat cake!
hmmm-
https://www.thegwpf.com/ignore-climate-hysteria-world-grain-crop-set-to-break-record/