Maybe a 60 to 80% lose in wheat

[airdrop]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-FiQPIXfU4 there is a news post in this youtube video from Kansas and it's not looking good at all , firm up your flour supplies .

[redman2006]

So coming from a farming background, all is not lost. Even if the winter wheat goes belly up, if there is moisture to plant in the spring, a spring wheat crop or other grains can still be successful. I don't know if it was discussed in the video, as I have not yet watched it.

[airdrop]

Yes they could but if the drought continues as it should in this grand solar minimum look out . Farmers where I come from in Oklahoma have been moving away from some wheat to cover crops . That's ok but still takes wheat out of the picture . As to spring wheat that may be an issue is there enough to plant with , as stores are drawn down prices are going to go up and up .

[redman2006]

Another option is pulling some of the irrigated ground out of corn and feed grains. Shift to wheat.

[airdrop]

Would you irrigate a $3.85 / bushel at 20 or 30 bushel / acre crop when you could have !50 bushel/ acre crop at $4.00 or so and still fund the Pivot to run , you might loose money . Most pivots I've seen back home has hay, crabgrass for hay and Milo for feed . The Ogallala Aquifer that feeds a lot of those pivots out west is about used up , they've squandered it over the years and when we might really need it it may not be there .

[redman2006]

Nope, but a couple 9f things are wrong with the assumption. First, if wheat is truly short, it won't be $3.25. Secondly, dryland wheat should run 30 to 35 bpa while irrigated will run well in excess of 100. Some people, with really intensive methods have gone 200 bpa with wheat. Lodging, fertilizer, etc are hugely important, and it takes a much different management system.

Another consideration is input. Wheat, grown in the same conditions as corn, requires fewer inputs. Fuel and fertilizer are two much higher inputs for a corn crop than a wheat crop. So corn will always cost more per acre to produce. Given that, you have to run the numbers, but profit in a time of true shortage may be much higher than expected compared to corn. That will vary based on farm, location, cost of inputs, equipment etc.

Also, consider that wheat can provide a primary forage crop as well as a secondary wheat straw crop, you are not stuck at 3.25 a bushel anyway. Of course cattle graze corn stalks as well, but that is a fall forage as opposed to winter or spring with wheat. Enterprising farmers can also get some serious money with nontraditional "farming" for game bird habitat and selling hunts later. That can be done over either stubble, but a better hunt over corn usually for a plus on its side.

Don't forget, wheat comes out early enough for a fall crop on the wheat land, so that puts a serious mark in favor of wheat when you consider total production from an acre, and land costs as well as other fixed costs like your pivot and equipment get spread better for a much better margin on either crop.

[redman2006]

I have not kept up closely with commodity prices, but I just looked at them. Wheat and corn are darned near neck and neck for $ per bushel as averaged for the year. Not nearly the difference I expected. Beans are of course still high at nearly $10, but corn and we at are pretty darned close, and actually under 4 for each as an average. EDIT the higher being wheat.

[airdrop]

I got news for you these droughts are going to get worse or just constant and there is NOT enough pivots in the plains states to make a difference and even if there were they have taken the water table so far down that some are hitting salt water . The motor pump sizes have got so big it's surely becoming to expensive . They could go to dry land crops but buckwheat and sorghum grain make a flour that is not know to people in this country for over 100 years . I drove out into the Panhandle of Oklahoma a few years ago and a lot of irrigated fields were not being used , pump stationed looked old , stuff doesn't grow if the rain don't come, DUST BOWEL much . We may see some dirt move this spring because the ground is bare , when I was a kid around 1958 I seen a dust storm come out of Kansas and it isn't pretty .

[W.Lynn]

Bowl, my friend, dust "bowl." Your bowel is something else.

[airdrop]

Out of the bowels of hell comes dust lol

Bowl, my friend, dust "bowl." Your bowel is something else.

/ Also food shortages in Europe again but not much being said about it , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVOr8n73eGY when Europe starts having summer failures due to cool and wet weather they'll be hungry . So if a whole lot of countries experience shorts where is their food going to come from ????????

[redman2006]

I can't predict the droughts, but it has been seen before. We can adapt. I do agree that we have issues with the Ogallala and other major aquifers. Much of that land should never have been broken. It should have been left as bunch grass prairie and grazed.

Thing is, much of the eastern lands that raise forage crops for pleasure animals can be used for high yield grains. Many areas of crp and other reserve programs can be broken in the long term out look in areas where there is higher rainfall.

We do have options and reserves if they are needed, but it will require thinking out of the box. There are many areas we can shift production and resources from nonessential use to food production in times of emergency. You mentioned drought specifically, how many billions of gallons get flushed every day? How much can we conserve with things like pools, car washes, law watering, ethanol plants, and so on and so on and so on?

Can we conserve our way out of a long term crisis? Probably not. But we can divert a helluva lot of resources should the need arise. Would it be fun? Nope. Would food prices rise? Yep. Would all of us be over our ideal weight and eating like we do now? Not likely. But I also don't think 8t would be the end the way some of these youtube guys see in their crystal balls.

Some of these guys have been saying the end is near for decades. If they say it often enough, long enough, they will be right; after all, climates change, just ask the wooly mammoth and the dinasaurs.