On Saturday, June 5, 2021 at 7:08:28 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 5 Jun 2021 11:32:41 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Friday, June 4, 2021 at 6:18:01 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 10:47:24 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 7:19:28 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 3 Jun 2021 15:51:28 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 6/3/2021 11:22 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 8:03:51 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/2/2021 8:05 PM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 2 Jun 2021 18:25:00 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:


One acquaintance of mine has an all-electric car and a very large solar
array on his house. His system is set up to first recharge the car. When
the car is topped up, the system sends electricity back to the power
company, reducing his bill. He's very happy with it.

Out of curiosity has your acquaintance ever calculated the pay back on
the system?
Not as far as I know, and I doubt the payback matters to him. He's
extremely committed to environmental issues. For him, his system is just
The Right Thing To Do.

What is the environmental damage from the construction and then destruction of solar panel arrays? This is not a minor problem. Do you have any idea of the maintenance problem of large dams? ...

Not to mention the environmental damage from mining and burning coal,
drilling for oil, converting huge portions of our corn crop into fuel...

Errr... I believe that the corn turned into fuel is grown in addition
to the normal crop grown for food. In fact I remember the loud shouts
of joy when the farmers found that they could get paid for growing
even more corn to be turn into alchol:-)

Yes. But the over production of corn for fuel leads to lower prices for corn, which might, likely does decrease the net income of said farmers. They are too successful at producing grains that are not really needed. Then the US government has to make higher crop subsidy payments instead of putting the money to pay off the debt. Or offer health insurance to those with none. Or some other wasteful thing. Like new military jet planes. Trump gave many billions of dollars to farmers to buy votes and subsidize them. And growing more corn than we need also introduces more chemicals and fertilizers into the soil which poisons our water. Too much poison in the water is harder to deal with than too little poison.

Have a look at
https://www.macrotrends.net/2532/cor...cal-chart-data
which shows corn prices over the past 60 years and the level seems to
have risen some 560% during that period.

--
Cheers,

John B.

That equals a 11.12% annual return/increase in price. Seed corn, what you need to start with to grow the corn crop, probably also increased a similar expense. Tractor to plant, plus the planter itself, plus the combine and corn head to harvest the corn, plus the wagons to haul the corn from the field to the elevator in town, also have to be paid for to operate as a business. Assuming you bought all this machinery on loans, interest to pay the bank. Then add in personal living expenses like a house and car to drive to the grocery store, and groceries to feed yourself, utilities gas and electric, clothes, Sunday morning church offering, etc. Farm land prices and rents have also increased considerably in the past 60 years. Got to pay for the land to farm.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html
Above is a link to Average and Median USA incomes from 1991 to 2019. Just half the 60 years from your corn price reply. Average/Median in the USA went from 20.9/15 thousand in 1991 to 51.9/34 thousand in 2019. Less annual increase for the whole USA than for corn prices. But still 2.5 or 2.3 increase in less than 30 years. Compared to your corn increase of 5.6 in 60 years. Somewhat close.

Dow Jones average was around 5,662 in May 1960. Its now 34,756 in June 2021. I just found some rough numbers. No precise dates so don't get too exact with me. 5,662 to 34,756 in 61 years (close to your 60 year corn numbers) is an increase of 614%. Fairly comparable to your 560% corn increase over 60 years. So commodity prices like corn have increased at about the same price as financial stocks. Maybe the same applies to commodities like iron, cotton, lumber, silver too.

Now to the point, maybe. Corn is grown by farmers and corn is used to feed people and animals. And the animals that eat the corn are used by people.. So corn is a useful commodity. And with lots more people on earth than there were 60 years ago, it should be more valuable today. More people need more corn. But corn has just gone up in value about like everything else. Not more even though its become more important with the world wide growth in population. So corn prices are depressed!!!!

I see your rationalization but I'm not sure that it is accurate as a
very large proportion of the world's population do not eat corn nor do
they feed animals on corn. In fact, growing up on a small farm in New
Hampshire I don't remember feeding corn to anything but chickens...
and people, or course.


--
Cheers,

John B.

I think the corn market has changed considerably since your New Hampshire childhood days. I think back then field corn, as opposed to sweet corn which is eaten by human beings. Field corn is/was used as animal feed. That was about it back then. But today, through the advancement of science and all the other evils of the world, corn is now used to make corn syrup, sugar, for food sweetening. Soda pop. And probably added to every other processed factory made food on earth too. And of course field corn is used to ferment some alcohol out of it to add to gasoline and make ethanol. So the demand and production of field corn has sky rocketed in recent decades.

Here is a neat informative article on Iowa corn. I'm positive Iowa corn is superior to all the corn grown in other states.
https://www.iowacorn.org/media-page/corn-facts

Another neat article on corn in the US. This is a guvment website so they are automatically liars according to Tom. So...
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019...gest-crop-2019

Here is a chart of the amount of field corn grown in the USA over the decades. Looks like 1970 corn production was only 29% of 2020 corn production. I picked 1970 figuring you were a kid in NH at the time. Or is 1960 more accurate.
https://www.worldofcorn.com/#us-corn-production