If American corn farmers could get 2007's prices for corn and pay 2006's prices for inputs, they would be sitting pretty. Fortune Magazine estimates such a crop with a 180 bushel yield and $3.50 price would net $270 an acre. Unfortunately, cash land rents and machinery, chemical, seed and fertilizer inputs are rising at record rates as well. As a result, Fortune estimates that a return to a 2006 price level of $2.50 a bushel would now bankrupt many corn farmers. Due to input price increases, most farmers with rented land will only net around $50 an acre in 2007 or approximately the same as before the ethanol boom. As Levi Strauss noted about the California Gold Rush, the real money was made in selling shovels and blue jeans - not mining for gold. The same is true of farm inputs in the current corn boom.