Posted on 03/30/2022 3:19:42 PM PDT by Mount Athos
The UK government is to host a crisis planning meeting with farmers about rocketing fertiliser prices, as part of several moves designed to reduce the impact of rising costs on food production. Quotes for ammonium nitrate fertiliser prices have risen as high as £1,000 a tonne in recent weeks, compared with £280 a tonne a year ago.
The cost of fertiliser first rose in response to the increase in wholesale gas prices, because of the levels of energy needed for production.
More recently the conflict in Ukraine has exacerbated the situation, disrupting exports from Russia and further increasing production costs. A recent price surge sparked panic buying from some farmers who feared the price would keep rising.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will host a fertiliser roundtable this week with industry bodies, chaired by the farming minister Victoria Prentis, to discuss pressures on farmers and to come up with possible solutions to soaring prices.
The meeting will also look at alternatives to ammonium nitrate fertiliser, including those produced from organic material, as well as the use of some traditional farming practices, where crops are grown without fertiliser.
Defra said the government would pay farmers to help them with the cost of sowing nitrogen-fixing plants, such as legumes and clovers, to reduce some of their dependence on manufactured fertilisers.
Some farmers, who are already facing increased costs for fuel and animal feed, have warned they will offset the higher prices by buying less fertiliser, which could lead to lower crop production at a time when supplies of cereals are already threatened by the war in Ukraine, which is a major exporter.
The environment secretary, George Eustice, said the measures announced by government were “not the whole solution” but intended to help farmers manage their nitrogen needs over the coming year.
“The significant rise in the cost of fertiliser is a reminder that we need to reduce our dependence on manufacturing processes dependent on gas. Many of the challenges we face in agriculture will require a fusion of new technology with conventional principles of good farm husbandry,” Eustice said.
Mark Tufnell, the president of the Country Land and Business Association welcomed Defra’s announcement, but warned of the “sheer scale of the challenges ahead in the UK’s food production”.
“Some farmers may choose not to spread fertiliser at all this year. But if prices continued to stay at this all-time-high then government will need to urgently consider ways of increasing and diversifying domestic fertiliser production,” he said. “We hope this will be a central focus of the roundtable Defra has rightly called.”
Defra has also introduced a range of other measures designed to help English farmers deal with rising prices, including a delay in any changes to permitting the use of urea fertiliser.
Its use had been expected to be banned to reduce air pollution, following a government consultation launched in 2020. The measures will not be introduced until April 2023.
The department said it was also introducing changes to the rules around autumn muck spreading.
I suppose I just don’t understand the details of this sort of thing. It probably is truly harder than I think it is.
But I’m thinking of WWII. All of a sudden, we needed ships. Lots and lots of ships. And planes. Lots of planes. And new ships. New planes. Go design those things, and put them into production right away. I’m talking months. Hop to it. We have no time. I mean: No time. Get it done. Oh, and in addition, go invent the atomic bomb. Fast.
Our current crisis is: fertilizer. We need some.
But this may be a problem which is too big for us, and just cannot be solved in a timely manner, and people may starve. Nothing we can do about it.
the Democrat “solution” would be to levy a massive new tax on fertilizer “profit gougers”, haul fertilizer CEOS before Congress to publicly keelhaul them, dip into the fertilizer strategic reserve and hand out more “free” money to everyone to help reduce inflation, and if that didn’t work, then establish price controls on food, and then if that didn’t work to nationalize all aspects of food production, from farming all the way to the retail stores ...
Manure. Urea, which is just cow pee. Night soil.
The stupidity of globalism. The manufacture of essential products should not be concentrated in one place.
Wait until China invades Taiwan and Slo Joe embargoes the Chinese pharmaceuticals that keep millions of Americans alive.
It is actually very simple.
Eliminate all restrictions on oil and gas drilling and exploration. Open up all federal lands to oil and gas exploration and drilling. Eliminate all federal banning of new oil and gas transfer systems-Pipelines.
Eliminate the EPA requirements of gasoline blends-go to ONE blend and stay with it. Eliminate the federal requirements for emission requirements on diesel engines-I.E. urea systems.
Eliminate all restrictions on the production of fertilizer production within this country as well as all the restrictions on the production of other chemical plant enhancement products I.E. herbicides and insecticides.
The only restriction should be is if those plants pollute intentionally they pay to fix it-you break it you fix it. (No more dumping of toxins to get out of responsible disposal. Kind of like what Dow chemical got away with for years and years and now we have to pay to clean up their criminal activity.
Nationwide.
Pretty simple huh? Now convince pig face Bidet of that. Or any of your congress critters.
At those prices, fertilizer is simply not available for most of the world’s farmers. However blame the green lunatics. their assault of the fossil fuel industry has made natural gas, the core ingredient of fertilizer, scarce and exoensive The pajama boy green lunatics are not likely to starve or die in the coming hunger wars. Wish somehow they could be held personally accountable for the coming famines and horrible starvation.
But you may be right. It might be to late since some countries are already in the midst of shortage crisis.
There is going to be unrest like nobody has ever seen for a good long while.
“which could lead to lower crop production at a time when supplies of cereals are already threatened by the war in Ukraine”
Oh, man. Not my Fruit Loops!
Also the JIT (Just In Time) nonsense really bit us when the lockdowns occurred.
We claim that our military exists to protect us in times of war, and that agencies like FEMA exist to protect us in times of catastrophe, so why can't we claim that we need local manufacture to protect us in times of scarcity?
We have companies — Allied Chemical, Dow, Monsanto — which already produce Urea Fertilizer 46-0-0... great for crops.
&
I still have a John Deere Tractor ordered in 1943 received in 1944 that starts on small gas tank then switches over to kerosene.
You want to hear a good one? When Daddy bush was Prez the bureaucrats in the Pentagon were pushing “just in time ammunition”. Fortunately wiser heads prevailed.
I do not doubt this country has the means and the capacity to meet our food needs. And to produce a significant amount of the various stocks and fertilizers for export.
The questions are at what costs and do we have the political will to operate in whatever fashion is necessary in spite of environmental, green or other concerns.
Leftist and greenie politics are overruling everything, driving America into third world status, thousands of companies/businesses into oblivion, and millions of people into a subsistence existence.
from the Amazon link:
Currently unavailable.
We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.
“Manure. Urea, which is just cow pee. Night soil.”
Not enough around and expensive to spread on 40,000 acres of wheat.
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