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Rising Corn Prices Fuel Planting - And Concern Farming
By Mr Ethanol | April 26, 2007
Demand for ethanol prompts many area farmers to plant more corn, which could have impact on Chesapeake Bay and price of other food.
Fredericksburg:
A surge in corn prices has area farmers hoping for profit this year, but environmentalists fear the record-breaking crop will set back efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay.
Demand for ethanol, a gasoline alternative distilled from corn, caused corn prices to exceed $4 a bushel early this year, double the price farmers received two years ago.
Today, F.E. Jones & Sons Granary Inc. at Montross is paying $3.49 for a bushel of corn. A year ago, said Barbara Jean Jones, the price was $2.22.
The high prices have caused U.S. farmers to plant the biggest crop of corn since 1944, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
This year, USDA estimates America’s farmers will plant 90.5 million acres, an area the size of Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Nationwide, the increase is 15 percent more than last year. In Virginia, corn acreage is expected to jump from 480,000 acres last year to 520,000 this year.
This week, in fields from the Northern Neck to Culpeper, farmers hoping to cash in climbed on their tractors and dropped millions of coated kernels barely bigger than teeth below the surface of thousands of acres.
Westmoreland County farmer Danny Allensworth was one of them. He said he would raise about 600 acres of corn this year, compared with 400 acres last year.
“But I’m not rich yet,” said Allensworth, noting that the cost of seed, fertilizer, chemicals and fuel have also risen. He estimated that it will cost nearly $400 to plant an acre of corn.
If the luck of the summer weather is with him, Allensworth hopes to average about 130 bushels of corn–and a gross profit of about $520 an acre.
In Culpeper County, farmer Jack Inskeep says he’s planting about 100 more acres in corn than usual. But his decision wasn’t driven by higher prices.
“With our corn/soybean year-to-year rotation, it just worked out that way,” Inskeep said.
Corn farmers are also expected to apply thousands more tons of fertilizer containing nitrogen and phosphorous, major pollutants of the Chesapeake Bay and other watersheds.
Just as they promote the growth of crops on land, the fertilizers from farms and lawns contribute to algae blooms that damage and destroy marine life in bay waters. Read it all.
Photo by: Suzanne Carr Rossi/The Free Lance-Star
Topics: Money, Negatives, News |
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