Average Wheat Harvest, Improved Price

This year's hard white winter wheat crop was a little better than last year's, due to the lack of striped rust, which was in turn due to the extremely low rainfall during the winter/spring rainy season - which this year, wasn't. (As you will soon read, this is not an unalloyed blessing.) The yield was slightly more than 2.5 tons (83.33 bushels) per acre. Our tenant received $171.60 per ton for the wheat. This is the highest price in nominal Dollars he has ever received for wheat. Of course, correcting for the fall in the value of the Dollar, this is still a fairly low price. Unfortunately, he sold his wheat just before the wheat price had a significant run-up from the $5.00 per bushel level to over $6.00 per bushel. When asked about this unsatisfactory marketing performance, our tenant refused to comment.

Wheat Straw

Due to the current ethanol craze, along with the inflationary pressures created by the Federal Reserve's expansive monetary policies, the cost of livestock feed has increased so much that even wheat straw has become worth baling. There isn't a lot of money in wheat straw, but when you're literally grasping at straws, as is our tenant, every little bit helps. Here are the modern "big bales," approximately 11 times as massive as the older small bales, ready for shipment.

2007 Pima Cotton Crop Off to Poor Start

Our land uses well water for irrigation. This water is of very poor quality. The satisfactory germination and early growth of the cotton crop, whether of Pima cotton or Acala cotton, depends on the farm receiving enough rain during the winter/spring rainy season to reduce the salt buildup in the planting zone through leaching. As mentioned above, this past rainy season featured rainfall which* was far below normal. As a result, the Pima cotton germination was so poor that our tenant was forced to replant his entire Pima acreage. Even with the very warm weather which* occurred in late April and early May during and after that replanting, the Pima germination and early growth have been extremely disappointing.

Pima Cotton

This picture of the Pima cotton is deceptive. As bad as this looks, the actual fields look much worse. Our tenant is facing a second straight year of disastrously low Pima cotton yields, which, after last year's results, may seriously compromise his financial ability to continue operations. He recently quipped that if he won the lottery, he might just disk up the cotton. We don't know how serious his statement was. Of course, if we see a run-up in Pima prices similar to the recent market action in wheat, things may not turn out as badly as they appear to be now.

* Should that be "which," or "that"??? I never have understood that one. I suppose that's why I usually got As in math, and Cs in English!

Anyway...

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!