“I’m steering at a palette of 50lb bags of flour at Costco for $18.49, regular price. Don’t know what those were a year ago but that seems cheap.”
The US is not dependent on imports for any foodstuffs or fertilizers. Other countries like Egypt and the Middle East will starve without them. Egypt moved away from grains to oranges which sell for a lot more, but can’t be a staple. The last time Russia, the world’s number one grain exporter clamped down because of drought, locusts and fires, it caused the price in the Middle East to triple and resulted in “the Arab Spring.” (Food riots, not anything to do with liberalization.) Ukraine, where the Russians are bombing grain silos, was the number five exporter. As for fertilizer Russia was number one and I think Ukraine was around tenth. Their cheap fertilizer caused the poor soils in Africa and Sri Lanka to increase by five fold. They will now decrease by five fold. None of this will recover for probably a decade. We’re looking at five hundred million people starving. Globalization caused the world’s population to expand more in seventy years than it has in hundreds of years. Now it will contract. The problem is, the one lifeboat everybody knows about is the US, which has a completely open southern border. We could look like a Star Wars city in just a year or two.
I hope all those post those “people will starve in America” posts would read your post.
Not a great comfort considering food is 150% higher and fertilizer is 300% and headed for 4-500% higher. Food will be at 200% or more my the last quarter compared to a couple of years ago.
I imagine when those 3rd world countries are at famine levels, our fedgov will send them any extra we might have just like we're sending weapons to Ukraine. The US is being slowly looted.
According to the USDA, we are a major importer of fertilizer:
“The United States is a major importer and dependent on foreign fertilizer and is the second or third top importer for each of the three major components of fertilizer. The top producers of the major components of fertilizer include China, Russia, Canada and Morocco, with Belarus also providing a significant share of potash.”
The high prices of oil and natural gas (thanks in part to JRB, Jr.) will still make a rough go of it with fertilizer in this country, even though we’re not dependent on imports.