These commodity schmucks are always looking for a scare to pump values...when will people stop being manipulated by the fraudument insider scare mongering of the brokers.

Oil is cheap, bread is cheap, housing is cheap, most agricultural commodities are dirt cheap and it is the marketing board supply control and broker hype that makes them "valuable".

Between marketing manipulators, taxes at all levels of production and sale and brokering hype, Canadians seldom pay the true cost of their daily commodities.

The people getting screwed in a manipulated market like ours are the producers and the end users.

Kate: you should know by now it's the farmer's duty to supply the world with free food and free carbon off-sets....after all what have we, the great unwashed got to spend money on anyway?

Some quick math. If the price of grain had kept up with the price of combines, wheat would be at $80 per bushel. Of course, back in the 70s, they did not make combines as large as they did today. Also, I don't think that they make pull types anymore.

Interesting article, the price of grain has to rise, it was too low for too long in relation to everything else

I remember back several years ago, my dear old Dad was telling me that the cost of the wheat that goes into a loaf of bread is pennies per loaf, 6 cents I think. Even at $80 a bushel, I don't think bread would cost anymore than double what it does today. The math is pretty easy. A bushel of clean wheat is 60 lbs. Figure out how much flour goes into bread, assume it is simply ground wheat, and you are off to the races.

At $80 per bushel, I figure the cost of the wheat in a loaf of bread would be about $1 or maybe 94 cents.

It is not the Farmers turn because the govmits, all govmits, do not want it to be.

Food, that farmers produce, is the most important commodity in the world. Bar none.

The politicians will NEVER allow a truly opened market place. Farmers gaining control of that market place is their biggest fear.

Hence the $$Billions in subsidies when grain prices are low and the restrictions, export, when prices are "too" high.

People in the Third World have starved in order for rich countries to keep grain prices "in-the-correct-range".

The problem with high grain prices is less a problem for us as it is with peasants in third-world crapholes who make $6 a month.

It's a lot harder to pay more for food when you don't have enough food to begin with.

The left keeps saying they care about the poor but everything the left does makes poor people poorer and more people poor.

"...wheat was $5.00 in 1972 and combines were $28,000. Today, wheat is $4.50 and combines are $450,000. Why is it not farmer’s turn?"

That's a silly argument Kate. There have been been huge leaps in productivity over that time period. And 1972 was tha absolute peak of profitability in grains as it was the year of the Great grain robbery when the USSR was allowed to purchase grain from the US.

Until this year there has been a profit squeeze in recent years on SK and MN grain farmers and less so on AB farmers (as their land values have, for the most part, soared). This has been due to three primary causes - High subsidies to other nations grain farmers, the inefficiencies of the CWB and the paralyzing of improvements to wheat and barley breeds and yields due to the antiquated visual grain grading system Canada uses and other countries stopped using years ago (this last reason can be also be blamed on the CWB BTW).

The consumption of grains for energy is due in large part to an imputed subsidy - the requirement for minimum levels of Ethanol in fuel.

Yep, so not only are the Kyoto Kultists making energy too expensive for the developing world, they are making food too expensive for them now as well.

Meanwhile, some would want us to take our tax dollars and bribe Third World leaders to live fat and happy whilst keeping their people in the Stone Age.

What will be the end result? The Third World is destined to become a human free ecological preserve where the only humans who manage to survive will be viewed by the west as subhuman evolutionary holdovers.

Revelation 6:6

Price of corn going up because of demand for ethanol,now to expensive to use as feed so will switch to wheat for feed. Hang on you wheat producers you might make a buck yet.

If the price of wheat went up to $80 a bushel third world countries could not buy it and their own farmers could make a living growing it. Instead they are forced to compete with subsidized grain, which they can't and they end up being fed by the UN in refugee camps.

Redux:

The great thing about NOT hiding behind a moniker is having the testicular fortitude to say what I want, when I want with repercussions.

I believe you call it "freedom".

With regards to the "broker" comments and market manipulation: you are the classic pump and dump that you glibly deliver in the first post; however, that technique has left many unsatisfied along your trail of life. Whilst that practice may have worked well in the back of your vehicle, after 210 years, your partners, and this blog, deserve much better.

'If the price of wheat went up to $80 a bushel third world countries could not buy it and their own farmers could make a living growing it'

But would their own people be able to buy it?

truthsayer: It's actually much worse. They end up growing poppies and then we invade them to prevent drug trade in our streets.

Aaron:

You actually believe that garbage you spew?

Here is a thought Lester,

Oil was $30 and then with a little friction in Iraq / Afghanistan, it doubled to $60.

Chavez is spending money like it was water and with money troubles, Ahmadinejad wants the oil price to stay at $60 and higher, not to mention all other oil interests like Putin, the other ME producers Chevron / Exxon and even Alberta Oil Sands.

Greed is great . . eh? Is that why Israel and Lebanon / Syria were never able to stop crushing heads for 35 - 40 years.

Define greed.
OK, Imagine you are Exxon or Chevron and suddenly you have double the billion$ profit over what you had three years ago.

What to do?

How about a giant airliner that holds 800 passengers instead of the 300 or so common today? AvGas costs us next to nothing so profits would be Astronomical. Yah!

Risks would be astronomical too. Airframe stresses would be triple those of todays airliners.

The public is clueless. Onward and upward.

It*s fun to fantasize eh? No group would be that recklessly greedy. = TG

It goes without saying that the doubling price of oil is the direct pull on E85 grains that puts the price of foods beyond the reach of the poor.

But, I should have said so anyway. = TG

First, the latte/basket-weaver crowd screams "the world will end if we keep on burning fossil fuels."

The Suzukis sang the praises of so-called "renewable fuels" and the media runs with a good story.

The naive invester pours money into ethonal plants, not knowing, and not being told by the media either, that grain ethanol takes more energy to make than you will recover. Might as well just use the fossil fuel in the first place.

Now that the price of grain is profitable the do-gooders of the world will start hollering about their next "save the world calamity".

Food is too expensive, blah,blah. We cannot let the western world put food in their vehicles.

Some are about to take a huge bath.

Hey Larry: You are free to rebutt anything I say with factual counter argument but you chose to engage in another puerile personal attack... is this intellectual deficating what stands as your legacy post?

WARNING! WARNING! TROLL ALERT Redux. Don't give 'em the satisfaction.

Fact: I don't broker grain.

You research as well as the Winnipeg Free Press.

best lien form Ivison's column . . .how he describes Citoyen Dion's latest Green Plan . . priceless

"It shouldn't be hard to come up with a plan more realistic than the Liberal manifesto, which would have been deemed cutting-edge thinking in Brezhnev's Soviet Union."

I love it, just love it. Over a dozen years or so ago when Mohawk was advertising their gas with 10% corn or whatever the hell it is or was this very subject, gas or food came up amongst my group of friends. It took us, less than a third of a bottle of scotch to come to the same conclusion this Lester guy just came to. I guess when asked, the leftovers will just tell the poor to drink gas for the sake of the environment, caring bunch they are.

and now this

http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188

cant we all just get along.

Some in these comments worry about third world people not being able to afford to buy food.Its a false argument as most people in the third world grow their own food.Its just in our societies that there is enough money in working that we can purchase our food.In fact,in packaged individual portions yet.Its not very long ago that nearly everyone in Canada had a garden and there still is a great many that still do.A great deal of fuel and money is saved with our own gardens.Also they are a great exercise and weight loss program.

Larry Weber at 1:15 PM said "classic pump and dump ...may have worked well in the back of your vehicle"

I wonder how much business that comment just cost you, Larry?

I raised sheep for many years. A high price per pound was .85 cents--usually got about .60 cents. Then we would see the same lamb in the supermarket at $10/lb. It is the producer that loses out at all times.
As for grain for fuel--yes, finally the farmers may realize some benefit for their hard work--but don't bet on it--the middleman will grab it all with the help of the CWB--for the good of the country donch know?

Spike

"""""Some in these comments worry about third world people not being able to afford to buy food.Its a false argument as most people in the third world grow their own food""""

wot rock do you hide under????

last time I wuz in Mexico it wuz still 3rd world, and just recently there has bin much it thee news about the crisis in corn prices in Mexico due to "gas corn"

Kate, being against the ethanol scam doesn't mean being anti-farmer. If the government wants to decease grain supplies to raise grain prices, that can be done without wasting millions of litres of farm fuel and thousands of tons of fertilizer (plus the energy required for the distillation process) to yield ethanol containing LESS energy than was required to produce it!

Land banking or even just cutting a cheque for every grain farmer would save all of the useless wheel spinning. A straight subsidy wouldn't be "GATT green" but, wha' the hell, nobody else plays by the rules anyway.

If producing ethanol from grain made any sense, ADM would have gone into the business in the U.S. free market years ago, instead of waiting for fat government subsidies. (And that's using corn which, thanks to higher yields and a higher sugar content than other grains, actually does yield slightly more energy in alcohol than the overall process consumes.)

Zog, P.Eng.

sounds like your health is the same as mine George....permantly stooped from being told to bend over so many times by so many people!

Since when are the rest of us responsible for making the grain market more profitable for farmers? The government needs to get out of the market, it doesn't need to add yet another market manipulating communist central planning scheme into an already polluted market.

I'm against subsidies for the same reason that I'm against the Communist Wheat Board.

I'm against Ethanol because it's a bad plan. That it also negatively effects the grain market (just like every other government interference from subsidies to duties to quotas or any other stupidity) just makes that much less sense.

Farmers and their income should be left to the market, to the most innovative, to the most entrepreneurial and most efficient. Those that can't make money will sell out to those who can. That's capitalism. Food is no different than widgets.

"Why is it not farmer’s turn?"
Farmer's have been first in line at the public trough for decades. Why is it not someone else's turn?

Since when are the rest of us responsible for making the grain market more profitable for farmers? The government needs to get out of the market, it doesn't need to add yet another market manipulating communist central planning scheme into an already polluted market.

I'm against subsidies for the same reason that I'm against the Communist Wheat Board.

I'm against Ethanol because it's a bad plan. That it also negatively effects the grain market (just like every other government interference from subsidies to duties to quotas or any other stupidity) just makes that much less sense.

Farmers and their income should be left to the market, to the most innovative, to the most entrepreneurial and most efficient. Those that can't make money will sell out to those who can. That's capitalism. Food is no different than widgets.

Okay, lets say Japan decides to subsidize their cars by 50% and ship them to Canada. Think our auto industry wouldn't have their hands out for a subsidy?

"first in line at the public trough"

Its a very long line... and seldom has it been first come first served....

But more to the point billy O, that is exactly the point that Larry was trying to make.

The minute the market moves away from the consumers and towards the producers there is a call to arms to protect the consumer.

The funny part is the industry will survive either way, the consumers will survive either way. And what I receive for producing the grain will not change much. All that changes is instead of funding my product through forced subsidy you are just forced to pay the same amount in demand price.

People move in and out of a market, subsidies go up and down, and commodities are bought and sold.

One single fact remains. "You cannot make one person better off without making someone else worse off." Every market will always end in an equilibrium.

Zog,

In politics, a P of eng just yields frustration.

Every barrel of corngas offsets the import of a barrel of fossilgas.

Corngas production provides jobs and farm income as well as tax revenues.

Corn farming keeps the big equipment dealers afloat.

Corn farmers vote.

Guess the efficiency of E85 production gets lost in the mix. = TG

"..Every barrel of corngas offsets the import of a barrel of fossilgas."

WRONG. Every barrel of corngas requires more than one imported barrel of fossilgas.

Why do you think so-called biofuels have not been in production before. It is now, only because of the Suzuki Greens hollering. Our tax money is what makes it fly.

A blend of a SMALL portion of ethanol in gasoline WILL make it burn cleaner. Which is good. It can also replace tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock additive. No-lead, good. Better for your pistons too !! But more expensive.

You are correct. It is wrong in a direct caparison with no politics and circumstances considered.

However the activity is wealth and job producing even though it is not as efficient. = TG

To add to B. Hoax.

1 barrel does not equal 1 barrel.
-->Ethanol burns slightly less efficiently.

second it does still cost more fossil fuel energy to create a barrel of ethanol then it produces. (the fermentation process is much improved but it still costs 3-4 units of energy on the farm to make 1 unit of grain energy)

But he is incorrect about "tetraethyl lead". Its use was largely discontinued in Canada by the mid 80's and the US shortly after.

These 2: "Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT)" and "Ferrocene" which are arguably just as toxic are the ones in widest use in the developed world today as fuel additives.

And yes. Low concentrations of ethanol CAN be used safely instead in most engines (I don't think you can put it in vintage vehicles, but you should check your specific engine) to replace those three rather toxic chemicals.

E85 production in Canada is a pipe dream until you can successfully cross the energy deficit. (corn in Iowa in a really good year actually does it, sugar often does too)

Biodiesel is still quite interesting to me since it is produced from oilseeds. Oil pressed out is significantly higher in energy than wheat or corn.

Then why dont these green wussietards quit opposing us using any kind of fuel

Barcs, points taken, thx.

Can a green field be thought of as a solar collector ??

A big one, an expensive one, a not too efficient one and a very vulnerable one (the wx, elements).

But one that is indispensible in producing cooking oil, flour, animal food, sweetners, protien and BEER !!

" ..Then why don't these green wussietards quit opposing us using any kind of fuel ?"

For the same reason hippies hitch-hiked, with out streched thumb, in order to get to the protest march. They are clueless. Can't, don't want to see the irony. Fried, losers.

And again lets not confuse the groups. By left, I am sure most of us here do not lump the carpenters, construction workers, electricians in with the latte/basket-weaving crowd. One group puts a roof over our head. The other reads Atwood in Chapters and drinks latte in Starbucks. Hortons has the Movers & Shackers.

Baffles the mind why Layton can't see that.

"Define greed"

Greed is the desire for unearned wealth. This is distinguished from the profite motive, which is the desire for earned wealth.

I totally agree with Kate, what is wrong with the farmers getting a bigger slice of the pie? Enviro-wackos are such a-hats!

I think the big deal in the US is that the Gov't is trying to do something quickly to wean Americans off of their dependency on foreign oil and I think that this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to do something.
I think it is just one of many things that are being worked on and doesn't rule out everyone from running out and buying a Prius - but it takes time for people to change mindsets or the way they live.

Poor countries mentioned in the article like Zimbabwe, Chad, etc. (and he threw in Iraq - for some reason) are mostly poor for political reasons. He also mentions India. India is the world's second largest food producer (after China) and it's government is expecting to double it within 10 years - it is seen as a growth industry and a way to generate jobs and increase their exports.

Anyway, I think there is a lot of arable out there just waiting for the market conditions to be utilized.

Larry sez: Fact:" I don't broker grain."

Who said you did?...and what is really up your anal cavity?

And let us remember...over the years as smaller farmers retire or go bankrupt, fewer farmers owned larger farms. This is the reason for larger machinery. This of course doesn't make farmers wealthier because they are carrying more debt. That's debt, not profit. It's high time they made some profit in this most risky of enterprises.

ccon and pro USA

The enviro connection is irrelevant. Why do you want to waste vast amounts of energy to produce less energy than is fed into the venture? This is equivalent to burning dollar bills to fuel a power plant. Stupid, stupid waste to cultivate the farm vote.

If it's in the national interest to support farmers, there are available mechanisms that make more economic sense than this boondoggle. Just another classic example of "anything the government touches turns to shit."

umm zog, the enviro connection is the only reason ethanol is coming in.

Harper doesn't need to have the farm vote, the grain growing regions in the west have voted blue for decades.

You can look at is as a subsidy for ag all you want,.. but the fact is its the urban elites who have demanded we "Go green" and here's the magic bullet they came up with.

Several of the farmers around me took the same university classes I did. Have the same knowledge that I do about how much energy it costs to make a unit of energy in grain.... but farmers aren't stupid. If the urban elites want to dump a bunch of money down a hole to make themselves feel don't expect the people you are directing it towards to jump up and say "wait, you are wrong and you shouldn't give me that money".

The environmental lobby doesn't want to hear they are wrong anyway and according to polls they have most of the public hornswaggled into believing them and their "guilt money transfer system".

Barc

You're probably right about the farm vote here in Canada. I admit to thinking more in terms of the U.S., where the ethanol "industry' is already huge and the farm vote critical. Mea culpa.

As far as the enviros are concerned, they were late jumping on to the ethanol bandwagon with the global warming nonsense and are now starting to jump off. I've been following this boondoggle closely for 30 years. It started in the U.S. as a fake move towards energy self-sufficiency.

As we do with many goofy public policies, we are blindly following the neighbours on this one.

if the economics of making fuel from grain made any sense(w/o gov manipulation) then entrepreneurs would seize the opportunity