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Tonight I came across a blog post, Falling Prices: Why Is Food Not Part Of This Trend?  I am here to tell you, because it shouldn’t be.

As I wrote back in March, in anticipation of the growing season, We’re Long Overdue To See Food Prices Rise.  Amongst other things, two of the price factors I used were wheat price and fertilizer costs.  While wheat is still higher than we’re used to, so is fertilizer.  The difference, when wheat went up last year, so did everything else, and when wheat came back down, nothing else did.

In fact, today, if you’ve got some decent wheat, you could expect to sell it for about $6 per bushel, before the elevator finds everything wrong with it that they can and starts docking the price.  Better than a few years ago?  Sure.  Enough to live comfortably?  Well, let’s just say farmers aren’t very sympathetic to those facing foreclosure, on a house they could never really afford in the first place.  When farmers couldn’t make the numbers work, their bankers told them they couldn’t have the money.

Fertilizer is still the big killer in a farming operation.  While last spring it cost about $35 per acre to make one pass across the field with fertilizer, now it’s about $60.  Based on the figures we used last spring, the fertilizer cost has jumped to $420,000.  And they’re selling their wheat for less money.  And they didn’t have as much wheat this year as they did last year.

The general consensus among farmers also seems to be that they don’t like subsidies, but without them, they’ll have to cut back on costs somewhere, which will result in not as much crop to harvest, which will result in shortages, which will drive food costs up further.  And don’t even think about asking them to simply not seed something, to “let the land rest from farming when necessary.”  Land costs so much money to buy, and also, land rent isn’t getting any cheaper, meaning that our farmers can’t afford to let it just sit there.  They’re paying for it, and they need something out of it.  If you had a million dollars, would you hide it in your mattress, to let it rest from the wear and tear of regular circulation?  No you wouldn’t, you’d invest it, or at the very least, put it in a savings account.

No, if you want to wonder why food prices are so high, you need to look elsewhere than the farmers and subsidies.  After all, anhydrous ammonia is a byproduct, being able to sell it as fertilizer is like bonus money.  So why does it keep going up in price?  Oil is a major ingredient in chemicals, which is a large part of the reason spraying crops has gotten to be so expensive.  Now that oil prices have fallen and continue to fall, why don’t those prices fall as well?  When you really look at it, the prices are falling on everything, except the products farmers need.

Detroit is complaining they need bailout money.  To help move vehicles, they claim to be slashing prices on their pickups (every farmer has AT LEAST one, usually 15+ years old, which they truly use AND abuse), now as low as $35,000!  But as my farmer friends say, that’s still too much.

You ask, “wouldn’t this be an ideal time for food prices to come down, so that people in dire financial straights can better afford to keep food on the table?”  I could have asked for the last 15 years, “wouldn’t this be an ideal time for prices to go up for farmers, even if food must become more expensive, so that farmers in dire financial straights don’t lose their farm?”

I say those who are causing the gouging of the farmers, whether with fertilizer and chemical expense, or not getting them enough money for their crops to turn a profit, need to change.  Farm subsidies could definitely use some tweaking.  Farmers would even prefer not to need them, but until their income to expense ratio becomes favorable, for more than one year out of 10, they are still a necessary evil.

So stop complaining about food prices, stop blaming subsidies, and ask why the likes of Monsanto can’t decrease prices.  Because,

“Only then can the prices be allowed to come down to a level that more people can afford, especially in the difficult times which lie ahead. And perhaps then we can see the demise of the agriculture-industrial complex (“agri-business”) and the simultaneous “rise from the ashes” of the nearly extinct family farm.”