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up local prices of corn, which is used to feed hogs, cattle and poultry, forcing farmers to seek alternatives including outdated baked goods, Reuters reported.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Farmers have incorporated substitutes including dry pet food that is outdated or mislabeled and recycled bakery products like breads, cakes and other sweets to reduce their dependence on corn.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.
Color me unsurprised! When I was a youngster ( many decades ago) we supplemented the grazing and grain-based feed for our Aberdeen Angus herd with “day old” bread from a large, but local, bakery. I do think that using corn for food is insane, whether it’s for people or animals.
Soy beans should be cheap
That picture of cows eating is incorrect for this article!
You can see that what is in the cows feeding trough is silage, not corn!
Feeding corn to cows is high risk. Corn sugars/starches produce excessive fermentation where coarse fibrous silage is normal.
Stock yards may feed corn/grains to cattle for a few weeks before slaughter to increase their weight and improve meat marbling. Even then, the corn is in addition to silage, not instead.
No farmer ever purposely feeds dairy cows corn except in dire circumstances!
This borders on fake news! And malfeasance.
It is not unusual for hog/pig farms to contract with all local restaurants and grocery stores for their food wastes. That is what pigs do wonders with! Pigs turn foods that humans consider waste, unseemly, dirty foods, discarded foods, decomposing foods, etc. into healthy pork.
We are now in the first week in the month of August!
August is when this year’s dent corn crop, i.e. dried corn, begins to fully ripen and dry. Harvesting fully dried dent corn starts the last two weeks of August and proceeds until late Fall.
This means that ALL of the corn currently fed to animals is from last years crop!
Any feeder claiming shortage of feed corn is therefore claiming that insufficient corn remains from last years bumper crop.
Claims like this are akin to Enron’s energy auctions where Enron choked energy supplies until prices shot up, then sold energy at maximum prices.
It appears that feed companies are hoarding corn in hopes of higher prices next Spring – Early Summer.
I hope America is once again blessed with a significant corn crop that causes corn hoarders to lose their shirts.
I grew up on a family farm. Cows, horses, hogs, cattle, chickens, turkeys, as well as about 300 acres of row crops, wheat and hay. A true family farm, not an industrial farm.
One of our neighbor farmers was the brother-in-law of the local grocery. The neighbor would go to the grocery and load up all of the stale perishables; bad (rotting) fruit and veggies; as well as the bread, cookies, eggs, etc. that had not been sold by the expiration date. He made arrangements with groceries in adjacent small towns to do the same with them. Then he’d bring it all back and feed it to his hogs. It was a smart move. By no means was the food enough to replace the hog feed he bought from the mill, but it supplemented it. This was in the early ’70s.
Corn prices are falling like a rock. The world is not coming to an end.
When China embargoed US soy, prices rose >25%, and pig farmers started using food waste.
Ask them how that worked out 🙂
FWIW. Corn futures.
https://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?t=ZC&p=m1