Roadside Hay Salvage

[ianben]

I think all farmers down on the farm need better prices whether in Canada Brazil the US or EU.
I dont believe FOS or Farmcorp are the answer though. Too many IFs and nearly immposible to reach that critical number when everyone wins.
I do believe we all need to get better at maths though!!
We must be reponsible for low prices because we will not agree a price.
Lets fix a price I dont mind where. A price below which we will not sell.

Subsidised or not todays prices are a joke to everyone except farmers.

The only people we make money out of are other farmers. It is time we all charged a realistic price for what we produce

[plowjockey]

Wow !!! What a novel Idea! We will just ask for $10. wheat and we shall recieve! Get your head out of the sand and wake up! Some of us still should go to school and learn about
1. Supply & Demand
2. Markets!
3. Effects on both 1 and 2!
Everyday we farmers learn to produce more grain and help drive down price. Farm corp hopes to control a market by controling a large enough share to do what you ask! Problems are
1. Nothing is stopping the producer from selling his grain when he or she is offered a price that they can live with. Everyone's price is different!
2. They only deal with 1 grain or commodity. I know on my farm I can gorw at least 10 dif. crops!
FOS at least attemps to achieve a goal and have everyone still in the plan. You cannot do it any other way! Course you could tell the weather Gods to have a global disaster! Which would you prefer controlled or uncontrolled. I suppose when the first railroad boys looked at the mountains the numbers were overwhelming too! Thank God that some people had the balls to beat those numbers and build something.

[ckd129]

how does the FOS prevent farmers from acting opportunistically? By telling them not to seed 1/3 of their acreage? Curious because I missed that part.

[plowjockey]

I believe there are a few ways that they could do it! As farmers it will be up to us to ultimately police for our own benefit. Its plain to see that if you can't follow through on the plan then your plan will not achieve the desired results. After all it is all of agriculture that will be rewarded when the plan is successful. You could put some type of money plan were people are rewarded for following the rules and for breaking them. I think that if open minded producers get together and come up with these last answers the plan would be a go. To get the answers for every detail when you can't even agree on the base plan would be futile. I wonder if any people in this forum has put any time into helping this organization come up with these answers with optimistic recommendations?

[cakadu]

Economics tells me that the plan will have difficulty in getting too far. What is going to be done in terms of looking for alternatives to the crops that we already grow in overabundance? What about looking at things like multi-species cropping that will yield more from the same piece of land?

To quit producing for one or even two years isn't really going to change all that much if you go back to doing what you have always done before, even if you overlook the fact that for every one producer who joins and doesn't grow wheat for one year, there will be at least one who grows more because there is the ability to do it. How long will it take to get back to the position you find yourselves in currently?

It's not that the idea doesn't have merit i.e. the cooperation versus the going it alone mentality - it's just going to take a lot to get there and have you got the time to wait until you get a critical mass? It seems to me that this idea has been floating about for 2 years or so now - where are the numbers at?

[plowjockey]

Every hour of everyday farmers like us somewhere is seeking a new and profitable crop to grow. That is reality and I have to scoff at people that think diversity is the answer! Hello we are already working on that!
The more people that join the less each producer in acreage terms would have to take out! If you had to summerfallow 1/3 could you do that! I know our farm could and some do more than that on a regular year. Bottom line the answer is there we just have to reach out and do it1 We can sit back on our paranoid worries and do the status quo or try to change! Maybe some farmers are just not hurting enough yet! After all with FOS you will know ahead of time if it will work as they simply do not go ahead with it until the #'s are there!

[ianben]

A novel idea $10 wheat just ask.
Immpossible before the internet but why cant we comunicate and agree prices at next to no cost.
Confidence is all that is needed and a then the need to sell every grain or produce more and more receeds.
Wheat is $10 but you cant necessarily sell all you produce.
We just need the confidence that wheat will be $10 tomorrow next week and next year.
Aim to replace what you sell. This is the way the rest of the world works.
Using the internet we could too.
We could not be comunicating like this ten years ago you in Canada and me in the UK.
Lets harness this medium and have agriculture which supplies what its customers demand at our prices just like everyone else!!!
FOS seems to disregard the customer in my opinion. I believe supply should be guarenteed as much as they want at $10 It is our job to make sure we can supply no excuses or handouts for weathere etc.

Till we can fix a price all schemes are doomed.

Why is it so hard to fix aprice we can all live with?

[AdamSmith]

To Ianben, I don't know about the UK but here in North America, society at large frowns heavily upon price fixing. You may convince a whole bunch of other farmers that your brand of price fixing is a good thing but I'm pretty sure the other 98% of our population would not stand for it.

I've been aware of FOS for a while now and I have to agree that the aim is appealing, but I've never been able to think my way entirly through the concept without having it all fall apart.

I did go to the website and a couple of things caught my attention. First the general theory seems to be to shock the market by creating what is described as an artificial drought. That is done by taking 1/3 of the land out of production every 4 or so years. Even the thought of this is supposed to cause markets to spike early in anticipation of the artificial drought.

Maybe, but highly unlikly.

The one thing I do know about markets in general is that they are unpredictable.

I don't think anyone can argue the fact an 8 billion bushel reduction will cause prices to go up. But how can you be sure that prices will go up as much as is anticipated?

What happens if everything works according to plan right up to the seeding of the 2/3 crop, sign-up is on track, the acres are in fact left unplanted but the other side of the market, the buy side, knows this is a price squeeze and refuse to play along?

Instead of a $2 or $3 increase we get a piddly little $.75 bu. increase in wheat. The millers ration better, adjust there ingredients a bit, bake more whole wheat bread and less white bread (you can make alot more whole wheat bread from a bushel of wheat than you can white bread). Push the whole wheat bread by stressing it's a healthier choice.

Maybe a few of the less well off nations of the world will just take less grain for a year, heck they're used to having people go hungry.

What happens if something like that were to happen and we caused the market to permanantly shrink?

Wouldn't it be a disaster to cause the milling, malting, cruching and feeding industries to, by necessity develop new technologies and develop new efficencies so they could provide their finished product with less grain,permanantly?

The market will react to a drought which is a natural phenomenon in a certain way but I am certain it will react quite differently to a man made phenomenon.

This is just one of a few reasons why I hope FOS never gets up and going.

The other has to do with governments and regulators and policemen and judges and fines.

Remember pooling began as a voluntary concept with a goal of marketing 50% of the wheat grown on the prairies and we all know how that nobel concept turned out.

Let's not make the same mistake on the production side.

[ianben]

Hi Adam
I am not for price fixing by farmers in any other way than is carried on by the rest of industry.
I want us to provide the service we expect.
A stable price and unlimited supply.

I would just like us to know each others costs and have a price below which we will hold back our own production.
I would like us to hold stocks so that in times of drought or natural disaster we did not force our customers out of bussiness.
Your cattle bussiness seems to be having a hard time at the moment with drought and high feed prices.Are you going to win next year with nothing left to eat your grain.

Would everyone have been served better if barley had been $3/bu for the last 5yrs and was $3 today and likly to remain around that in the future.

As a customer I like stable prices and this is what I think farmers should try to give their customers.

If you want to spray for grasshoppers,for example, we expect the product to be available today even if we havent used any for five years. We are told how much it is a litre and it is usually a price which allows both parties to win.
There are win win prices for everything
It is the volatility that causes problems and farmers are reponsible for that by the way we produce and sell.

I am sure your white loaf does not vary in price in line with the prices we recieve.

CUSTOMERS LIKE STABLE PRICES lets find a way to give them what they want.

[Kasro]

Ianben,

You want a stable price and unlimited supply?

Is this what you asked Santa Claus for?

[ianben]

As a customer a stable price and an unlimited supply is what I find I can get at the supermarket, chemical supplier,and machinery dealer.

I tell them what I want and they TELL me the price. We deal and haggle but they have a bottom line which is similar with whoever we try to deal with.

Why cant farmers find this bottom line?

Why must we sell all we produce when the customer does not want every last grain or only 99 when due to good luck we have 101

Then force him to find alternatives or go out of business when we have 99 and he wants 101.

If we do not provide a service perhaps we get the price we deserve.

Does it have to be like this or could Santa bring us some common sence?