When wheat is cheap, it seems everything is cheap.
It looks like it is back to scratchin' with the chickens,---again.

That's what all the Wheat farmers around here say too.







As they climb into their brand new $60,000 Diesel.

Hey, you noticed that around our area too? Imagine that, a tax write off too probably. But of course, it is used for work too.

Geno

PS, honestly, I know a couple of wheat/lentil/garbanzo farmers and they're alright folks trying to make a living like the rest of us.

PPS, however, I also have to use my truck to get back and forth to work but I can't write it off. Not enough deductions to make the long form worthwhile, but like a lot of folks around here................................. I like to b-tch a bit now and then.

Hell that 60,000 was pprob just one payment from their "crop insurance" aka farm welfare!!!!!!!

How does one go about getting a crop insurance payment for low dollar wheat?


And please excuse me while I go start up the 2003 Ford that is loaded with tools, bulk tank, air compressor, shovels, chains, etc..

Just your typical grocery getter, office commuter....


Fuuck sakes......

Guess you gotta play the system the guys around here sure find a way

Don't get me wrong Sam.
I know farming's hard work so if a guy is making money good for him, they dam sure earn it but you gotta admit, farmers are always complaining about something. If it ain't the weather it's the price of wheat.
Least all the one's I've met from Kansas to the Palose do.

I won't go to the farm store on Sunday. Too depressing.

Who would that be? Name some, if you would...

Have you ever even googled how you get crop insurance? Do you know the cost or criteria?

Or or you just popping off about something you don't know about again?

it is all public knowledge just look it up listed by counties and names, all subsidies paid out

Sammo,

You're one of the ones I was thinking of. Hard working just trying to make a living.

Not like some of the "family farmers" with tens of thousands of acres and the employees to work them. The ones that can now sit in an office most of the day (and night too when things go bad) and drive out to the farthest property in that 60K rig we're mentioning.

I didn't consider the privately held timber company I worked for in NorCal a "family" operation either. Not with 365000 acres in Cali, 2 mills (one capable of a million BF per day!), 100's of employees, not to mention their OR and WA holdings. Even though the company was basically run by family members, including in laws, of the guy who started it, it's not my idea of a family operation. It's just a family owned big business. (mmm? reminds me of someone sitting in a big white house on the East Coast?)

You deserve a new truck. At least a 2008 .

Hope you're enjoying your winter. Thanks also for the pics in the best of 2016 thread. You do OK work with a camera also!

Geno

PS, lets hope for a nice spring for you folks back there too.

$60,000 won't buy much of a farm tractor. Might work to plant a deer plot for a deer lease. I am retired so don't know for sure but a 4240 john deere cost $85,000 around 1980.

Subsidies aren't "crop insurance" and not all those payments listed are even "subsidies".

CRP payments are really rent payments, and much of the farm equipment is purchased through loans.

So keep pretending you know all about farming.
Just don't bitch about it when you're not starving.

Farming and ranching both are pretty much feast or famine, with the emphasis being on famine in the past couple of decades.

One contributing factor is continued gov't. regulation and interference. And yes, subsidies.

I think FG was talking about $60k pickups.

When we had a wheat farm prices were around $1.80 and once they got up to about $3.30. This was in the middle 1980's and into the middle 90's.

Today Wheat is $3.58 in the area I live and that is down from a high of $8.47 a few years ago.

I don't know of another industry that makes less on its products today than it made twenty years ago when you factor in the cost of machinery, tractors, trucks, seed, fertilizer, and all the related things like insurance and fuel. Yields are up I suppose but certainly not enough to offset the drop in price.

14 pro spring wheat is a little over $5 in northeast MT.


Depending on operating expenses you need a 30-40 bushel crop just to break even. And a 30-40 bushel crop is good for this area.

Figure $150-200/acre input cost.


The big boys are spending a million or two per year.

Lot's to lose but lots to gain.


But new equipment, land payments and winter homes down in Arizona are expensive.
(and cows might be a better investment than second homes...)


We'll keep chuggin' along with old tractors and hopefully be the last ones to squeal......


Welfare ranched all day, fed and got our little string of replacement heifers sorted off.



Beer time!


Should add that a lot of the progressive farmers around here have diversified and replaced a large percentage of wheat acres with pulse crops(lentils, peas).


High dollar learning curve but some guys have already done quite well.

Most everyone who isn't a farmer can't wrap their minds around the government paying farmers in conjunction to what they get on the open market for what they grow. I know it makes me shake my head at times when I hear what farmers get from the gov.

But what it boils down to in my opinion is we Americans like to eat lots of good food at bargain prices. Take away the subsidies and we might well pay $8 for a loaf of bread or $10 for a box of Wheaties. Not to mention what the price of beef, pork, etc.. might be.

If that was the situation, instead of a few b!tchin' about farmers subsidies we would all be b!tchin' about the price of food. Just my 2 cents.

I don't know enough about farm subsidies to say ya or nay Lonny but one thing I'm sure of is that it's no where near the money we give away to folks who refuse to even work so I'm OK with it.
Especially since the only one really bitching about it is Mohick and he hates everything.

Well gents, I started this thinking wheat prices, but we have drifted on to subsidies.
Main point, wheat seems to lead the way to low grain prices across the board, which leads to cheap livestock. "Cheap corn, cheap hogs."

Soybeans, and crude oil seem to be in lock steep.
Thoughts?

It was actually a poor attempt at humor Barry (sorta) but it is true that just about every time I hear two farmers talking they're complaining about something even though most of them (around here) do pretty well and drive fairly expensive trucks.

Kinda like the fire.

Farmers, and I count myself as one, are used to up and down prices, as well as up and down everything else. Two years ago, we were enjoying record cattle prices, and now they are so cheap, it's hard to see a profit. I agree that some farmers "work the system", just like those on welfare and disability do, as well as people in any other profession. There's always accusations flying around here about people who are farming crop insurance and subsidies, instead of making their money off their crops. And yes, some farmers love to spend their money on new trucks and tractors, just like other people love to show off their motorcycles and boats. The thing that I've never been able to understand, is that why the low prices for farm commodities never seem to show up in the grocery stores. A farmers wife that I know once told a fat lady that was fussing about all the farmers riding around in new trucks, that she looked like she was doing pretty good on the food that those farmers were producing.

If they had to depend on what I bought in a store they wouldn't make much

Yeah, but you're the exception, not the rule.

One thing necessary for farming. The ability to say "I ain't makin' no money" and get folk to believe it. There are too many years it is true. There are too many years it is a lie. They are great business people, I know some families that have kept afloat for 50 years, losing there butt every year.

The old story about farmers, "Live poor, die rich."