Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 August 25

= August 25 =

Bob Marley question
know if any bob Marley tribute concerts/parties happen in Vancouver around his birthday Or if any or his sons are doing concerts in Vancouver in the near future? Thank you! 174.7.167.7 (talk) 03:14, 25 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Ziggy Marley is doing a tour of Canada over the next few months, but Vancouver does not appear to be a stop on it. See here.  It looks like the closest he will be is Calgary or Edmonton.  He doesn't even appear to be stopping in the Pacific Northwest U.S. (Seattle, Portland, etc.).-- Jayron  32  12:50, 25 August 2014 (UTC)


 * You'd think he would hit the West Coast, if only to refill his stash. :-) StuRat (talk) 17:30, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Price of corn
Hello. The price of corn is 367.50 cents per bushel, but does it include the corncobs? Gridge (talk) 23:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC).


 * No that is the price for shelled corn, 15.5% moisture (56 lbs per bushel). Cob corn is a less common commodity. 75.41.109.190 (talk) 00:58, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * As noted by 75.41, cob corn is generally a tiny share of the corn market. The majority of corn (maize) on the market is grown for feed for livestock, and as such is generally hulled on site before shipping.   Cob being essentially waste product, it's only worthwhile to ship corn-on-the-cob for where it is going to be sold to the consumer as corn-on-the-cob.  And that's an almost insignificant portion of corn sales worldwide.  You can see here, only 1.8% of corn is used as "cereal" for direct human consumption; and of that 1.8%, most of that is ground up as cornmeal.  So, corn-on-the-cob, while a form recognizable to most Americans, is an insignificant portion of the corn market.  -- Jayron  32  01:44, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Gridge (talk) 14:37, 26 August 2014 (UTC).


 * Related Q: Why is corn so cheap, considering what a small portion of each year's growth is usable ? StuRat (talk) 17:50, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * The price is complicated, but related to supply-and-demand, the output per acreage, and the labor cost in harvesting and processing, etc. For an extreme example, take saffron.  It's produce by a rare crocus flower that only grows in a few locales; it has to be harvested and processed by hand (high labor costs) and you only get a few fractions of a gram of usable material from each plant (low output).  That's why saffron is one of the most expensive substances in the world.  Corn, on the other hand, can get from the ground to it's final processed form without touching human hands (low labor costs; all automated).  It grows just about anywhere (high supply), and you get a LOT of output per acre (see here for example.)  Only a few foods like potatoes and cassava have better yields than corn.  -- Jayron  32  18:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * United_States_farm_subsidies_(source_Congressional_Budget_Office).svg In this case, I disagree with Jayron: this is no simple case of supply and demand. First of all, corn is highly intensive agriculture, requiring literally tons of N input. It also doesn't grow just anywhere, it need very high C, good soils, and plenty of rain. Our high yields are due to at least one hundred years of focused research and breeding, though of course the history of corn is much older. My point is, yield per acre has risen dramatically, even since the 1950s. It's interesting you say that a "small portion" is usable. Do you think the same of wheat or rice? Most of our cereal crops actually have much lower calories per acre, and they also sell for much less per bushel at the grain elevator.


 * The price of corn in the USA is a highly contentious issue, and many people are willing to make up wild claims. Hint: Don't ask anyone this question in the Corn belt ;) Here are just a few of the relevant articles on WP: Agricultural_subsidy, High_fructose_corn_syrup, Corn_ethanol, Food_vs._fuel, Farm_Security_and_Rural_Investment_Act_of_2002. My WP:OR conclusion is that corn is cheap on the consumer market because of a massive federal sponsorship, in part designed to protect farmers from poor yield years, in part to prop up meat production while keeping prices down, and in part due to the influence of agri-business' demand for HFCS... really, it's all about meat and HFCS, and these are what keeps prices for corn off the field high, to encourage farmers to keep favoring it over other crops. Of course, feel free to read through those articles and refs and come to your own conclusions :) I have not seen it, but I've heard King_Corn_(film) is a decent documentary that at least touches on these issues. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:20, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Jayron is correct, though, that labor costs are very low for corn/maize. Its production is highly automated.  I recall driving across the American Midwest last autumn and seeing giant harvesters rolling across the vast cornfields. Marco polo (talk) 20:26, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, corn harvest is mechanized. But how much do you think those machines cost? You might be able get a small model combine without fancy attachments for around $0.5 million; the ones you saw likely cost $1-5 million . Of course, many of our industrially-grown crops have mechanical harvest, including wheat, rice and soy, so corn isn't really an exception in that regard. Now, the price of wheat is currently a little higher by weight, but as pointed out above, corn produces more weight per acre, so it's generally favored over wheat by farmers who could grow either. But that's getting bogged down in the details. My main point is that this is not simple supply and demand textbook price fluctuation, the current prices of corn are the result of a long history of federal spending to steer markets. It's actually pretty simple if you look at the big picture: Every farmer grows corn because it makes them the most money (they alternate with soy some years, but only to help them grow more corn). Every rancher buys corn feed because it is the cheapest. All the twinkies and cokes are sweetened with HFCS because it is the cheapest. The government is the actor that invests to resolve the apparent paradox. I'll stop now, lest I'm accused of WP:SOAP, but I just wanted to get some info out there that many people are not aware of. Stu happened to touch a nerve, as I used to work in a vaguely relevant field of science. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:46, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Corn on the cob seems to have less than 10% edible, compared to some fruits and veggies with 100% or nearly 100% edible. (I realize that much of the plant from which they came is inedible, but then that's also true of corn.) And you have trees for fruit like apples, but then they don't require as many resources each year because they don't have to start from scratch each spring.

I also wonder what affect on prices it would have if corn subsidies were switched to healthier crops like oats, or even sugar beets, so we could get sugar to replace HFCS. StuRat (talk) 16:34, 27 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Oh, I see what you mean now about cobs, but the incredibly high yields make up for that.
 * Quite simply, corn prices would go up if farmers didn't receive direct and indirect support from the feds. Also, in the USA, we do divert money into beet production, and have several protectionist policies including tariffs on imported sugar. See e.g. and  U.S._Sugar_Program, or just google /USA sugar tariff/. I think the corn lobby is just stronger. Actually, you should read through the link Jayron posted above from the NCGA. I mean, I expect it to be very pro-corn, but it's a little ridiculous how biased they are. For instance the claim that corn is "sustainable" is not at all supported. The way corn is grown today is rather harmful to the environment. High fertilizer usage entails high energy costs, and most N fertilizers are made with fossil fuels to power the Haber process. Then of course all the N runs off, leading to eutrophication, which is pretty much the smoking gun for the recent Toledo,_Ohio incident. There was a recent surge of interest in corn ethanol as a biofuel, but most careful analyses concluded that there was little if any net energy production, because of all the energy it takes us to grow corn in the first place. Now, there is some interesting stuff going on with cellulosic biofuel, see anything from here  if you want to learn about the energetic/economic analyses for that. I guess I've steered this thread far off topic by now... but the main message is that "farmer" subsidies are very complicated, and it's easy for either side to twist statistics (square quotes because the family farm is basically extinct in the USA, though the agri-business conglomerates  pretend that we're helping rural family businesses when we pass a new farm bill). I've been casually researching this stuff for a few years now, and I still feel like I don't understand all the motivations and effects :-/ SemanticMantis (talk) 17:11, 27 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Scare quotes, I think. Tevildo (talk) 12:32, 31 August 2014 (UTC)


 * We've offshored all of our other industries. We should do likewise with agriculture. Then we'll be dependent on our "allies" for everything. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:43, 31 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank God for allies like Australia, then. We're such good friends of the USA that every time there's an official visit in either direction, there's an obligatory and much-reported highly verbose reaffirmation of the strength of our friendship.  If that sort of ritual c**k-sucking occurred between individuals every time they ever met, an observer would be right to have very grave suspicions about the true nature of this alleged friendship.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:30, 31 August 2014 (UTC)


 * "You can tell when two politicians are friends, because they have their hands thrust so deeply into each other's pockets as to be locked into a permanent embrace." StuRat (talk) 22:29, 31 August 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks all. StuRat (talk) 04:34, 31 August 2014 (UTC)