Wednesday, June 11, 2008

10% Less Corn

There's a fair bit of noise in the news about how many of USA's grain crops are getting a really bad start due to too much rain, ain't that fabulous news.
It came out not too long ago that the current USA grain reserves is at it's lowest level in a long time. One of the headlines I seen today was along the lines of only 1 out of 10 corn seeds sprouted.
Apparently the USDA's numbers predict 10% less than last year for corn.
11.735 billion bushels versus last year's 13.074 billion bushels, a billion bushels here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about a substantial amount of grain.
So lets see now, thats 1.339 Billion bushels less or 1,666,326,584 cubic feet or 12,464,988,003 liquid gallons and weighs 74,984,000,000 lbs
What could this teensy bit of grain fill?
If you were going to stash it at your retreat you'd need 2,492,997,601 standard 5 gallon pails
or about
9,978,003 Chevy Suburbans
40.6 Houston Astrodomes
360 Titanics
45 Empire State Buildings

At 150 lbs per capita per year it could feed the country of Mexico (~109 million) their staple starch for a little over 4.5 years

I'm wondering if this is going to hit the evening news and the sheeple will be clearing all the Jiffy Pops and Old El'Paso taco shells off the shelves. OMFG I better get a move on my Doritos preps like yesterday

This is all back of the napkin
calculations & quick googles for stats, if I missed a click and was entirely wrong on a calc please let me know, I will give you credit as a math whiz, then send you shiny Canadian nickel that has a melt value of over $0.10 . Providing of course you don't consider me a complete Reptilian Lizard from the Fourth Dimension Overlord believing lunatic that in no way shape or form would you ever give your home address to.

Light the tires and kick the fires - this basket is really starting to move.

1 comment:

riverwalker said...

The corn shortage is probably gonna be more like 40 per cent. The media is gonna like and try to convince you it's not really that bad. Tried to buy some extra corn meal last night and could only find the little 2 pound bags.

BTW, I'm waiting for my nickel.(HaHa)