Corn problems.

[furrowtickler]

Willton , are you getting that rain on radar ?
Or more towards Lloydminster?

[WiltonRanch]

Willton , are you getting that rain on radar ?
Or more towards Lloydminster?

Yes. Lloydminster to Lashburn getting pounded as usual. My place wet too.

[furrowtickler]

Yes. Lloydminster to Lashburn getting pounded as usual. My place wet too.

It’s incredible how much rain that strip has gotten over the past 3 years .
Geographically similar to NB here but meteorologicaly stunningly different in rain .

[Bowerpower]

Tale of two extremes. Corn was way advanced last year and this year way behind. Had corn 6 feet tall July 1. This year be lucky if it is a foot tall by than. But corn can move fast. 10 days of heat and it could be knee high by July. Enough moisture here for the time being

[grassfarmer]

10 acres.an acre every 3 days so it lasted a month.starting mid december.

With how many head? dry cows?

[newguy]

With how many head? dry cows?

90 bred cows.

[grassfarmer]

90 bred cows.

So 270 cow days per acre?
Here was one of my crops - there are 200 head in that 2 acre break and you can barely see them - but it only yielded 180 cow days/acre.

[newguy]

So 270 cow days per acre?
Here was one of my crops - there are 200 head in that 2 acre break and you can barely see them - but it only yielded 180 cow days/acre.
[ATTACH]4403[/ATTACH]

A totally I put out 1 round bale of high quality alfalfa per day for the protein side of the ration.

[macdon02]

Basis at +50 @ e plant Illinois J/J. Kinda ****y with the rise in future..... it's like The govt bean counters dropped the ball.

[macdon02]

A repost from earlier this spring....

We know that "corn feed seed and residual" is a catch all phrase, and that makes it difficult to calculate what the animals are actually consuming.
So for now let's just put aside the seed and residual.
According to the*USDA*since 2014 domestic soybean meal consumption has grown by 11.4 %.
However, in the same time frame the*USDA*claims that domestic corn consumption has not grown at all.
This seems a little odd.
A hog operation in Iowa that I talk to is feeding 7.2% more corn year on year, and another in Minnesota is up 9.2%. A very large elevator chain in the Northwest belt is grinding 42 million bushels of corn, up from 10 million in 2013 in the same feed mill. Doesn't sound flat to me.
So I decided to dig a little deeper into the numbers courtesy of the*USDA*ERS website, which is a trove of treasures, as you will see.
According to the*USDA*for every ton of soybean meal consumed this year, the animals are eating 4.13 tons of corn, and next year the ratio is projected to be 4.17.
So how does that ratio stack up with previous years?
Excluding the super high priced corn years of 2010 through 2012, the average ten year ratio was 4.77, 15.5% higher. To put it another way, if this year the ratio were to be at the ten year average, corn feeding would be 820 million bushels higher than what the*USDA*says it is.
Doing the same calculation, but including all energy feed, such as sorghum and wheat, the ratio to soybean meal today is estimated at 4.36. Going back ten years, and excluding 2010 through 2012, the average was 4.87. Using this broader calculation we are currently running behind the ten year pace by 620 million bushels.
But what about DDGs ?
Since 2014 domestic feeding of DDGs has increaed by 1.2 million tons. Since DDGs displace protein and energy feeds in equal manner, they have knocked out roughly 600,000 tons of meal and 600,000 tons of corn.
Since the quantity of meal feeding is much smaller than corn feeding, DDGs have displaced a higher percent of meal than corn. So the original calculation of meal feeding since 2014 goes from 11.4% to 13.4%, and the corn number remains below 1%. We are now deeper in the hole and 670 million off the pace in corn feeding since 2014.
A friend of mine works for a large compound feeder with a market share of around 10% of all feed ingredients in the country, His corn/meal ratio is around 5.3 which is a far far cry from the 4.13 of the*USDA. The only change he has seen in the last several years is a significant increase in synthetic amino acids. One ton of lysine displaces 33 tons of soybean meal, and the lost volume of feed is made up with corn. So now the ratio is even more out of whack. Probably by quite a bit.
Does this cratering of corn feeding versus meal feeding make any sense?
Yes it absolutely does make perfect sense, when you realize that the*USDA's numbers are complete and utter rubbish.
They have totally lost control of the corn balance sheet and their data should be regarded with a beady and jaundiced eye. I just happen to have one of those.
Hundreds of thousands of test plots that I collected last fall, test plots that have been very accurate for more than two decades didn't suddenly go off the rails to the tune of 4 to 5 bushels. The*USDA*did.
And it wasn't just the test plots. A large elevator chain in S Minnesota calculated that SW and SC Minnesota yields reported to the elevators were down by more than 45 bushels from the previous year. The*USDA*was not in the ballpark.
A corn yield of 176 in last Friday's report is unjustifiable at this stage. An agronomist at the U of I says the*USDA*model should show a 166.4 yield. To use a 176 corn yield alongside a 49.5 bean yield is just plain stupid.
Why is it that since last summer, the*USDA*has used every report as an opportunity to kick corn in the teeth?
When they were forced to drop the yield in October from their fanciful 182 September yield, they destroyed the market by increasing Chinese corn stocks by 150 million tons. The*USDA*statisticians must be proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with their eminent Chinese colleagues,
holding copies of Mao's 'How to Cook Data in a Wok.'
Why does the*USDA*have corn acreage up 3.7 million acres, when the large seed companies say corn sales are unchanged?
When does coincidence lose its meaning?
But surely, you ask, the stocks number is the ultimate arbiter? It all comes out in the stocks. The proof is in the pudding.
Not if you carefully read the fine print of the*USDAhandbook, which states that the stocks number must fit in with the overall picture.
Well, if the overall picture was painted by a demented chimpanzee with a fire hose, a chain saw, buckets of neon paint and a desire to imitate Jackson Pollock, just how valid would the stocks number be? The stocks are as malleable as a piece of putty on a warm summer day.
Why is every single*USDA*data point bearish to corn? Yield, stocks, acreage, feed, and now yield again. A never ending merry go round for the*USDA, and an interminable nightmare for the US farmer.*
The problem is that the only arbiter is the*USDA. They get to tilt the playing field, choose the ref, change the rules, move the goalposts, and manipulate the scoreboard, all behind doors and with zero accountability. Then they pat themselves on the back, to the cheers of the sycophants, the bleating of sheep and an occasional squeak from a lemming. No wonder they bask in an aura of infallibility.
Well, I call foul on the yield and foul on the feed for a compounded very large number. I also say highly unlikely to their 176 yield. A likely Pie In The Sky Candidate if I ever saw one. I call foul on the entire*USDA*corn supply and demand. But I admire their tenacity.
Semper Infidelis.
At what stage does one ask, is there a motive, is there an agenda?
And when one does ask, the next question should be why are taxpayers' money being used to put American farmers out of business?
For those of you who still believe in the sanctity of the*USDA*stats I would draw your attention to the data below.
This is a absolute gem from the*USDA*ERS website. Cartier would be proud.
The yellow shows line 28 of feed ingredients that are consumed by animals. This line is oils and fats fed to animals.
Notice how remarkably steady the data has been for most of the time.
For 5 out of 8 years the animals had the most steady diet of fats. Exactly 905,000 tons each year. Not one ton more, not one ton less. I just love data like that, consistency, consistency. A bit like corn consumption for the last 5 years, flatter than a pancake on the expressway.
Then out of the blue, in 2015 and 2016 there is nearly a five fold increase up to 4.3 million tons. I calculated that this is the equivalent of a human eating 870 French fries every day.
I wanted to speak to the*USDA, but my cardiologist has forbidden me to contact them.
So I got a friend to call. He was told that this was in fact a fad diet, known as the Greaseball Diet, or commonly known as the Holy Squitters Diet.
Unfortunately it did not work as the animals lost weight running to the bathroom every 5 minutes. And the cost of Pepto Bismol became stratospheric. The chickens were proud of their glossy feathers and shiny eggs, but the cattle suffered most with severe cramps in both stomachs. The fad was eventually abandoned, and the animals went back to the 905,000 ton diet, which is what they are on to this very day.
These numbers have been sitting there, in plain view, in all their glory, since 2015 and 2016. No asterisk, no footnote saying Holy Squitter Diet. No line 29 for animal consumption of Pepto Bismol since 1984.
Surely this official yearbook data had to be approved by umpteen layers of bureaucratic hierarchy in this august institution, which reportedly has a cast of hundreds of thousands, all of whom are avid sticklers for the facts.
For years this data has never been subjected to scrutiny. When you know you are right, and your legitimacy is never challenged, you don't question.
Therefore nobody in the*USDA*has ever challenged a sudden five fold increase in fats and oils in animal diets.
So why would anybody in the*USDA*ever ask why the animals have lost their appetite for corn?
I will leave you with a headline from zerohedge which I have just read.
USDA*economists flee*USDA*after alleged retaliation with Trump.
The article says that six*USDA*statisticians are leaving over a dispute where the administration says that the statisticians have been writing articles blaming White House policies for the economic plight of the American farmer. Talk about the pot trashing the kettle!

[grassfarmer]

A totally I put out 1 round bale of high quality alfalfa per day for the protein side of the ration.

So 1400lb bale @90%dm supplies about 14lbs of dm per cow/day. That'll be close to half the dry matter requirement of a dry cow, depending on size, so the corn would provide more like 160 days/acre. That I can believe.