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Hey! Mister! Can I Plant Corn in Your Yard
February 18, 2008 18:50:36
Why do they do it? I really don\'t know. Sure, they can make some money doing something that historically has been barely profitable. But, by limiting their acres over the years they could have acheived the same thing. Instead the impetus has always been to grow more, more, more. This attitude has been promoted by the Universities responsible for research and development of farming methods and technology. But wait, these universities receive their money from Agribusiness companies that want to direct that research so it supports the use of their products, most commonly, petroleum based chemicals. Throw in also an agribusiness media whose advertisers are those same companies and you have a bubble that no one even knows they are in.
The expansion of corn after corn acres is bad enough but, what will happen to an even greater extent than it usually does, will be the cultivation of marginal acres to get more money. These marginal acres will come from newly cleared woodland and plowed pastures, mostly hills, that would have been better left untouched. The sorry thing is the whole thing is being fueled by the production of ethanol from corn which is at best maybe a 2 for 1 gain which is not good enough. Especially when making ethanol from cellulose material such as grass yields several times more ethanol per acre without the large inputs of petroleum based products.
There are articles beginning to surface about the inefficiency of corn to ethanol production. There are rumblings in Washington about why all this money is being spent to subsidize a crop that is not really returning much for what it takes to produce it. And, as always, there are those such as I who deplore the further destruction of the Midwest ecosystem to ultimately line the pockets of agribusiness companies selling the products necessary to produce the crop.
So if you have a big yard or maybe not even a big yard but just big enough to drive a massive tractor back and fourth you might be able to pick up a few bucks by renting it out to some enterprising farmer who needs more acres. But, you had better hurry before the price of all that chemical stuff goes up again and he realizes he really doesn\'t have any profit left after all.
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