Grain cargo ships

[Jimmers]

Does anyone have an idea as to how many grown acres of corn, wheat or beans it takes to fill a 700’ saltie? Salties are ocean going cargo vessels.

 

[Babin Farms]

Does anyone have an idea as to how many grown acres of corn, wheat or beans it takes to fill a 700’ saltie? Salties are ocean going cargo vessels.

All depends on bushels per acre and how many bushel the ship can hold. But I looked it up and found it can hold 2.1 million bu. of soybeans which equates to 38,181 acres at 55bu/acre.

 

[Jimmers]

Wow! I had always heard 15,000 acres, I feel sorry for the farmers. You would think that a guy with a 5000 acre farm would have some control over pricing, but not if it takes 6 times his annual output to fill up one ship. We will have grain ships sitting out at anchor for a week or two and have been told that they were watching the pricing of what ever they were there to get. A nickel a bushel at 38,000 bushels is $1900.00, got to cost a lot more than that to anchor a ship for a week!