Roadside Hay Salvage

[plowjockey]

1) Obviously the world is changing! Last time I checked Brazil and Austrailia were in the southern hemishere.Farmers all over the globe are told that and trained to think that more grain is more profit!
2) Who said anything about No Cash flow! Once again I find someone who has taken the time out to criticize but not to educate themselves with the Focus On Sabatical plan. If you made 2 -3 times the revenue as a regular year why would you lay off your employees?
3)Every Banker that I have talked to loves the plan after they looked at it! The supply part of industry does not give a shit about the primary producer as long as they get loads of cheap produce to move! That is where they make there money!! As far as small towns go, Look at them now and wake up they are not thriving by any means! How would they be hurt if the industry that supports them was profitable again?
4)Yep you got this one right and it is the corner stone that Fos have built there plan on! Who would be stopping another controled reduction of grains in the future to help all farmers maintain a living? Certainly not the farmer! Not government, look at the tax revenue that could be spent on other things ie health care, roads, and education!

[rodbradshaw]

Plowjockey
Just a couple of Questions.
1) Where is the money going to come from to place the hedges and buy the physical stocks to drive the price of the grain up?
2) Who is going to determine when to sell physical stocks and or get out of hedges or what ever instrument that is used for the commodity trades?
3) As Nakodo said France has the ability to produce more cereal grains than we do, Iowa produces more than all of Canada let alone Kansas. You are going to need all of the U.S., Brazil, Thailand, Australia, China,Argentina and Canada to have good participation to make any dent in the production. The idea that you can drive prices that high and generate income the year before may work the second time if the sabbatical is successful but there are a lot of government held stocks especially in the EU that will hit the market and hold prices down. The other thing with this new US farm bill is that there is less concern again about the market price as there was in the Freedom to Farm legislation of the last bill.

I am not against the idea, but I personally believe that it is not as simple the proponents of the plan have lead you to believe.

[rodbradshaw]

$15 dollars /acre on a third of my acres is for easy calculating is $7500. In our area that could be 30,000 bushels of CWRS,37,500 CPS, 55,000 of feed barley, or 20,000 of canola off 500 acres of land. If this plan is to work their is going to have to be a more sever penalty than two bushels of canola ( at $7.50). If you can drive the price of wheat from 4 to 6 dollars, that would mean an extra revenue of $60,000 for an extra investment of $7500. Large farmers may look at it just like spraying that extra fungicide.

[rodbradshaw]

It would not be good for the grain terminals, processing plants trucking companies ect.

[plowjockey]

I don't think large farms will treat it like that at all. They over the long term and short stand to make very well if the grain prices were to rise 2-3 times. A large part of the truckers are farmers themselves trying to put groceries on the table. Maybe the rest could haul us new equipment to replace our 20 year old stuff! Farmers always spend money! Grain terminals well when is the last time you got a check from Cargil for the early loading of a ship or a bonus for your loyalty, Or did you just have to pay more for that feed bag because of price fixing! Sometimes it is just easy to criticize than to try and help shape a plan to solve the problems. Don't get me wrong it is good to check all angles out!

[cakadu]

From my perspective, it isn't criticizing the plan so much as trying to understand it, hence the questions and comments.

What I am wondering about is if you're able to create the scenario where you can get higher prices, how long is that sustainable? How many years can producers go without producing anything? What happens when the anomaly of the higher prices disappears? Won't there be the same problems to contend with that you had before?

[wilagro]

I have been producing nothing for years and I'm still not rich. Trying to manipulate the price we get for a commodity is like sticking your head in the sand while the rest of the world goes about it's business as usual. The so-called market place will find supplies even if we produce nothing for 10 years. Sorry to rain on your parade but this scheme will not fly.

[cowman]

Now I'm no expert on FOS but I think they've got the right idea, basically. It's the old supply and demand thing. Cut the supply and the demand goes up. It doesn't make much sense to keep producing a product that is in over supply. Isn't this basically what OPEC did? And look where it got them. Sure some oil producing countries didn't go along with OPEC but it still was able to raise the price(and a lot of impoverished nations suddenly moved way up in the world). Of course they weren't competing against the US and EU treasuries like the grain producer here and in Brazil are!
But the fact of the matter is the economics of grain production in this country are shaky at best and eventually any business that can't generate enough profit is going to be toast. I figure, what have you got to lose?

[ckd129]

It neglects the free-rider problem. Your neighbours, as well as those on the international market place will respond by increasing acreage.

[mister]

Could I ask one thing of everyone? Please find out more about the FOS idea. Go to their web sight, ask for a free video and most importantly, don't look at it with a closed mind. I was among the first to laugh at this organization but after clearing my mind of traditional thinking I bought a membership.
I read some of the above comments realizing many people still don't understand FOS. You owe it to yourself.
I spent more money filling out forms for government programs and got nothing from them than the $250 membership I bought so you can watch a free video. Anyway... just learn more about Focus on Sabbatical, especially before replying to this thread,
Thanks! go to www.focusonsabbatical.com