Posted on 03/01/2022 6:13:03 AM PST by blam
I welcome are North Dakota overlords.😏
I meant our.doh.😖
The vast majority of African crops rely pretty heavily on imported fertiliser and pesticides to maintain their yields.
Problem is that 3 big world suppliers of fertiliser (Russia, Ukraine, and China) are either sanctioned, invaded, or blocking exports of fertiliser. I’m not sure of what the situation is for pesticides (I’d need to talk to some friends who would be in the know).
A worldwide shortage of fertiliser both increases production costs and decreases yields so combined with Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports basically stopped prices are going to head up badly.
Oh yeah. Squeeze seems inevitable. But there’s a lot of land that is productive enough to afford extra cost. Doesn’t mean consumers won’t suffer, but mass starvation? Nah.
I’ll believe it’s an issue when the U.S. gubment quits paying farmers to avoid growing crops.
The government has pretty much quit paying farmers to avoid growing crops since during the Regan administration. There was a “Diverted acres” program in which the diverted acres were planted in some unharvestable crop too keep the weeds down and the land became available for ordinary farming in later years. Here in Illinois, the farmers used alfalfa. It was illegal to harvest for hay or seed. The farmers thus cut the alfalfa after it was pretty much done blooming and left it lay. At the time, I had taken up hobby bee keeping and had worked my way up to 15 hives. Due to the timing of the alfalfa cutting by the various farmers, I harvest honey all summer and got about 3000 lbs. Normally alfalfa grown for hay is not a particularly good honey source since the best hay comes when the cutting is done at the start of the bloom. Unfortunately for honey production, the diverted acres program soon ended - the government(mostly Republican administrations)figured out that it was better to raise and sell crops than to do other dumb things. In addition, due to the vast number of acres in alfalfa, a disease wiped out the alfalfa in the next year or so.
To a large extent, the government subsidies apply mostly to crop insurance which is required for participation in the farm program and for Conservation Reserve programs in which the farmers are paid not to farm ground subject to crop failure such as river bottom land.
World wide starvation is off the table. Political troubles caused by sharp increases in food prices in places like the Middle East (a big market for Russian wheat) and some Asian countries is definitely in play.
One issue that has been overlooked is China’s ongoing efforts to rebuild its national pig herd after the 2/3 cull they did 2 or 3 years ago. From what I’ve heard the Chinese are importing all sorts of feed to recover and expand the herd to drive down pork prices.
China will increase its imports of Russian wheat but I’m not sure it will free up alot of otherwise China bound wheat from other countries.
Hogs can also be raised on corn and DDGS, and soybean meal to a lesser extant. Price might rise, but those aren’t going to run out.
True, doubly true as Chinese hogs also tend to get feed that provides all the heavy elements and complex carcinogens a growing pig needs...
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