The Rural Voice, 1990-02, Page 34iven the wild weather swings
we saw this past year and the
serious deficiency we have in sub -soil
moisture and water tables, I figured on
doing a long and intriguing weather
forecast in this month's article.
By citing mystics, soothsayers,
and those who measure the thickness
of chestnut hulls and hair lengths on
caterpillars, I knew I would have a
most serious and foreboding story.
However, it will have to wait.
I have a yet more serious, more
life-threatening, more financially
annihilating story to recount.
It started one morning last month
with a phone call. The man on the
other end spoke in a hushed voice,
his breathing laboured. Suddenly, I
recalled the voice. He was the one
who had phoned me deep during the
dark hours of night last winter. He
had wanted no one to hear him. He
had wanted to be certain that all party -
line eavesdroppers would be far from
phones with their prying ears. He had
feared his question would cause talk,
severe land speculation and bidding.
He wanted to know if he could
pay $125 land rent, like he "heard" the
"rest" of the boys were.
And so, quietly and in the deep of
night, he shared his most personal
secrets: his equipment costs, the price
of his new sprayer, what he had paid
for the soybean seed (after a six per
cent discount), and, most importantly,
what his yields had been (not what he
told the boys at the coffee shop) on
that rented 100 acres close to home.
He swore me to secrecy and set me
at my computer to run out crop bud-
gets by the ream, for soybeans, corn,
and white beans. His final command-
ment to me Has: "and see if I can pay
$125 like F. R. and V. 0." (names
withheld to protect the innocent).
I sat for days inputting the data.
The green blinking monster crunched
numbers with the hunger of a wood -
burning locomotive. The creaks and
wizzles of its internal drive turned to
groans under the load of 1,440,000
bytes of doctored and twisted infor-
mation. There was no end: ignore,
cancel, suspend, abort, retry? Then
suddenly the printer fired, the tractor
gobbled paper, the paten whirled at
SKULDUGGERY
LAND RENTAL
AND YIELD
PROSPECTS
Mervyn Erb is an independent
crop consultant and agronomist.
dizzying speed, serial ports interfaced
with parallel ports, and RAM cards
were spit out on the floor.
Then, near sun -up, it quit. As I
separated sheets and tore off tractor
feed margins, the verdict, ugly and
inevitable, became evident. The
banker would never be told.
My friend Horace (we'll call him)
had been conservatively optimistic.
He had constrained me to input corn
yielding 130 bu. at $3.20, soys 42 bu.
at $7.20, and white beans 32 bu. at
$26 cwt. But here, in black and white,
the dirty truth was exposed. Allowing
even less than custom rates for equip-
ment costs, and providing he worked
for nothing, Horace would lose $2.53
per acre on the corn, make $13 per
acre on the soys, and come out with
$54 per acre on the whites.
Obviously, the landowners and
rumour -mongers were making the
profits, at least 8 1/2 to 10 per cent
R.O.I. at present market land values,
and poor Horace and his equipment
were getting another year older.
So we conspired to meet in the
back lot of the Commercial Hotel —
not too close to the coffee shop, so
no one would suspect the truth, that
Horace had hired a computer basher.
To do what? To figure out how much
rent he could afford to pay, of course!
But soon the truth was out. Horace
began to bid up land rates wildly. He
figured he could farm with the best of
them. With a little rain he'd average
140 bu. corn. He'd cancel some seed
orders and buy longer -season hybrids,
throw on 25 pounds more N, market
smarter, lock in the basis, sell cash,
and buy calls at 14 cents strike.
I met him again one night during
the summer under the dingy light of
the Commercial's rear parking lot.
Horace had changed, and I feared he
had been drinking. It hadn't rained for
five weeks, the markets were flat, and
his soys were hidden by proso millet.
(Horace had negated a crop consul-
tant; he axed the proposed expense).
I later heard that Horace paid $125
for land, another heard it was $130,
and yet another was sure it was $145.
I hadn't heard from Horace since.
Now here he was on the phone. He
recounted the fatal facts. The weather
had turned against him. His corn had
shrivelled to 118 bu. per acre, he had
held it until January 3 (because of tax
problems), and sold for much less than
the $3.52 he needed, leaving a loss of
$44 per acre. His soys had shrunk be-
fore his eyes to 34 bu. and the pros-
pect of $7.20 a bushel faded like a
VIA train in the sunset to $6.36, net-
ting him a loss of $86 per acre. The
prospects of 32 bu. of "pearly whites"
at $26/cwt. were dashed to 26 bu. at a
yet to be seen $26/cwt., for yet another
loss of $41 an acre.
Horace was distraught. The FCC
was on his tail, the bank wanted more
operating paid down, and over at the
elevator his margin had been called.
But Horace had only one question.
His mind was focused, his breath was
shallow, and his knuckles white as he
gripped the phone. "Is it true?" he
demanded. "I was up at the Diesel
Diner for coffee and I heard E. B. is
paying $135 for rent. "Is it true?"0
30 THE RURAL VOICE