Food prices will continue to soar

Just bought some ribeye for $5.29Lb The ranchers are killing their breeders as they are too expensive to feed .6 months to yr from now the price may be $25.29Lb.

Pro farmer does hands on estimates of crops, usually more accurate than govt estimates. Ohio is as far east as they go. The only state that is expected to have a better crop than last year is MN. Iowa about the same. The rest of the states are less. So expect prices to stay high on feed and foods involved. Higher if we have to feed Europe too. The link is not long or hard to understand.
https://www.agweb.com/markets/grain-markets/pro-f ... pectations

BigBarney wrote: ↑

Wed. Jun. 22, 2022 9:03 pm

The electric tractors are here now... Why wait... Put your farm under the solar panels...

https://electrek.co/2021/08/04/solectrac-launches ... for-75000/



Charge from the panels and grow crops underneath...



Also the solar panels would power the well pumps and the irrigation and the power tools to weed

the crops. These would be high value crops like fresh vegetables and fruits.

https://www.wired.com/story/growing-crops-under-s ... ight-idea/

https://www.google.com/search?q=farming+under+sol ... nt=gws-wiz

All kinds of opportunity ...

BigBarney

I knew a farmer, now deceased, who in 1975 heated his farm house with solar heat. Talk about being ahead of times; he was way ahead…and he was very well off.

The price of fuel and fertilizer doesn’t hurt the big guys nearly as much as the small, few hundred acre, farmers. They just profit less, but they still do well…just not as well as normal.

Like the old saying goes for gravel plant owners, “you don’t buy land by the acre and sell it by the pound and not make a profit…you just don’t”. The same holds true for most big farmers with all that shiny equipment…not talking about the guys trying to get there…but you don’t buy seed by the pound and sell the harvest by the bushel and not make a profit. Least not if you’re a good farmer…otherwise you go under. Most times that profit is big too.

A few of the local farmers spend lots of time fishing Lake Erie with us since most aren’t livestock farming anymore. The crop farmers I’m referring too have 1-5 toys too…big pulling tractors and or trucks with engines costing 100k each. Then they cry the blues each time prices drop a little. Lots of things they cry about, but most wouldn’t trade it for a day job in a day jobs pay either. They’re not fooling me…and many are my close friends. They often let the cat out of the bag with regard to costs but get real secretive about profits, but they often want to know what someone makes at their day job. Don’t get any ideas I don’t love farmers. I wouldn’t have them for friends and live in farm country if I didn’t like them. That’s why I live here.

Anyway…
I like that idea of solar panels high enough off the ground to grow crops underneath. No different than another new technique being used around here now. Rather than clearing out all the fence rows some have elected to trim the limbs of the trees in the fence row high off the ground, like 20-25ft off the ground. It seems to be working well too. Allows plenty of sun along the rows close to the trees both in the morning and evening. Seems it’s working well with corn and beans.

Only a few farmers around here practicing it. The first place I seen this practice was heading south of Freemont, Ohio on 53 below 12 towards Tiffin, Ohio. It was a row of old growth Oak trees that apparently, and thankfully, the farmer didn’t want cut down. He had a nice stand of large black locust along the road frontage of his property and underneath the prettiest soybeans I’ve ever seen.

Actually, his corn and beans along the edge of those trees seemed to be growing as good or better than out in full sun.

I don’t see why pasture ground or hay couldn’t be raised under the solar panels as well. Now, fields full of short solar panels…naw!! Waste of farm land.

I’ve seen that video BB and I thought it was thinking outside the current solar box if you asked me. Not that I want to see a lot of farms looking that way.

I’d rather see those type tall panels in fields with crops and livestock under them, high enough to get tractors under them, than to see us continue to use nuclear energy where when there is a problem it results in completely catastrophe and makes surrounding lands for hundreds of miles totally useless…not to mention the detriment to people and animals where any damage done to land, man, or beast, is irreversible. It’s too late!!!

I think about that each time I go fishing in Lake Erie. If something happened to the Davis Besse power plant, just that one plant, it could potentially destroy the ecosystem of all of the Great Lakes depending on the wind and how it might shift. Just look at Chernobyl and Fukushima. What a waste! There are better ways to supply power. The cost is too high with nuclear as clean as it may seem…at least until it affects your back yard and communities. Use nuclear for now until we get the technology right for other means of producing power then phase it out.

Apparently Spain isn’t too worried about food shortages.

Tomato fight lasts hours.
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/twenty-thousand ... -tradition

Black Locust trees are legume/nitrogen fixer...

CapeCoaler wrote: ↑

Thu. Sep. 01, 2022 1:15 am

Black Locust trees are legume/nitrogen fixer...

Really? Never heard that or considered it with trees, but I guess certain trees do that as well just like beans and peas.

If they used tall solar panels here, good luck not having wind damage to them. Maybe in wind protected areas. Otherwise the extra cost to keep them up would be prohibitive.

Put solar panels where they belong, like in private yards, roofs, unused pastures, open spaces in cities, etc. Leave the farm land alone for farming. Solar does not even come close to being as productive as wind in acres used per Megawatt so doesnt belong on good farmland. I hate windmills but they do make much more sense than solar on productive farmland.

warminmn wrote: ↑

Thu. Sep. 01, 2022 8:26 am

If they used tall solar panels here, good luck not having wind damage to them. Maybe in wind protected areas. Otherwise the extra cost to keep them up would be prohibitive.

Put solar panels where they belong, like in private yards, roofs, unused pastures, open spaces in cities, etc. Leave the farm land alone for farming. Solar does not even come close to being as productive as wind in acres used per Megawatt so doesnt belong on good farmland. I hate windmills but they do make much more sense than solar on productive farmland.

Maybe we could stop selling it(Farmland) to the Chinese. Why we would sell our natural resources to our enemies is beyond me. Maybe Russia and NK wants some too.
"US Is Selling Our Farmland to Chinese Communists"
https://www.independentsentinel.com/us-is-selling ... ommunists/

k-2 wrote: ↑

Thu. Sep. 01, 2022 9:08 am

Maybe we could stop selling it(Farmland) to the Chinese. Why we would sell our natural resources to our enemies is beyond me. Maybe Russia and NK wants some too.
"US Is Selling Our Farmland to Chinese Communists"
https://www.independentsentinel.com/us-is-selling ... ommunists/

That is quite stupid for them to own our land. Last year the Chinese really stocked up on grain also, and it was expected they were trying to build up a supply for some reason (war). Money talks, always has.

The square mile of prime farmland near me that is going to be solar is all owned by people that live a long ways away, investors. One lives in Kansas. They made the highest bid on the land so got it. Possibly had plans to do this to begin with. Not a single local landowner would rent a single acre for solar. That land would produce over 200 bushels of corn and 60 of beans per acre per year, usually more, for at least 30 years, gone for solar.

Wonder if the Chinese will be eligible for farm subsidies like large agribusiness ? Agrivoltaic grows crops under solar panels[url][/urlhttps://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/agrivoltaic-farmin ... e%20energy.

China doesn't need subsidies when the profits are good and all costs are less than

traditional farming with a bonus of the electric production.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/09/03/giant-agri ... -in-china/

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/made-shade-promise-f ... lar-panels

Growing 120 different crops and harvesting the sun...

Just think about the energy shortage in California ,and now also a water shortfall,

could much of this be mitigated with solar/agriculture ?

BigBarney

Didn't know solar panels were making water now!

China is growing goji berries under theirs Who cares?

I am unsure I would want to be eating anything grown under solar panels. Sooner or later toxic things will soak into the ground from the panels or wires. Im sure they will claim its safe then 40 years from now they will admit it wasnt safe. Thats how it always seems to work.

Dont put panels on productive land and you dont have to worry about trying to grow things there. There are plenty of idle pastures and land to put them on without using good land.

A recent study showed that 1 of every 3 (might have been 1in 5) people in the U.S. had urine contaminated with traces of 2-4,D.

Solar panel residue is hardly a concern at this point in time.

Possibly, possibly not. Everything is claimed to be safe. Very few chemicals are and there has to be chemicals in the construction of the panels or wires. Will they leech onto the soil? Time will tell. Perhaps when they take a stray bullet from a coyote hunter they will. Still, why use good land for the panels? Im talking large solar farms, not someone putting them up for their own use or in city solar farms. The reason is subsides. If it wasnt for subsides they would not put them up on good cropland as it wouldnt be economical, and then the question of growing things under them wouldnt matter.