Food Price Watch Thread

weatheriscool
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Re: Food Price Watch Thread

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India bans wheat exports as heat wave hurts crop, domestic prices soar
Source: CNN
India banned wheat exports on Saturday — days after saying it was targeting record shipments this year — as a scorching heat wave curtailed output and domestic prices hit a record high.

The government said it would still allow exports backed by already issued letters of credit and to countries that request supplies "to meet their food security needs."

The move to ban overseas shipments was not in perpetuity and could be revised, senior government officials told a press conference.

Global buyers were banking on supplies from the world's second-biggest wheat producer after exports from the Black Sea region plunged following Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Before the ban, India had aimed to ship a record 10 million tonnes this year.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/14/business ... index.html
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caltrek
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Common Dreams has a recent article that looks at the crisis in both fuel and food. I have extracted below portions of the article dealing with food.

The Energy and Food Crisis Is Far Worse Than Most Americans Realize
by Richard Heinberg
May 18, 2022

Extract:
(Common Dreams) Nitrogen fertilizer, made from natural gas, is seeing unprecedented price hikes, largely as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war. In response, farmers everywhere are preparing to test the limits of how little fertilizer they can apply without threatening yields. Forecasts are bleak. For West Africa, reduced fertilizer use is projected to shrink this year's rice and corn harvest by a third. Costa Rica could see coffee output falling as much as 15 percent next year if farmers reduce their fertilizer application by one-third.

For many years, organic and ecological agriculture advocates have argued that the world could produce just as much food without resorting to fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides. But their alternative methods require knowledge and time for transition. Going cold turkey on fertilizer without planning and preparation will almost certainly lead to sharply lower yields over the short term. In response, the EU is now delaying rules intended to reduce farming's environmental impacts, including curbs on pesticide use. It also aims to put four million hectares of fallow land into cultivation.

Food security is being threatened by problems with distribution chains for all the inputs into agricultural system—from spare parts to packaging to cooking fuel. Once again, as with energy prices, there are several mutually interacting causes, including lingering effects of the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The latter has led to the loss of wheat shipments from Ukraine and Russia, which together are responsible for nearly 30 percent of world supplies. Recently, Russia has rained missiles on Odesa, a major port for grain shipments, further disrupting global food distribution.

Altogether, foods exported from Russia and Ukraine normally account for more than 10 percent of all calories traded globally. The two countries also export a significant portion of the world's vegetable oils used in cooking and preparing food. As a result of the conflict, there are now shortages of sunflower oil in Europe, and supermarkets in the UK are limiting purchases of cooking oil.

Low-income countries that were already destabilized by economic havoc from the pandemic are seeing further shocks now from higher food prices. Egypt is considering raising the price of subsidized bread for the first time in four decades, even though the subsidy is widely credited with keeping social unrest at bay.
Source: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022 ... ns-realize
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wjfox
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Re: Food Price Watch Thread

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Yuli Ban
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For the past few years, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008.

In recent years, just as in finance during the 2000s, key nodes in the food system have swollen, their links have become stronger, business strategies have converged and synchronised, and the features that might impede systemic collapse (“redundancy”, “modularity”, “circuit breakers” and “backup systems”) have been stripped away, exposing the system to “globally contagious” shocks.

And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Yuli Ban
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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Yuli Ban
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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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raklian
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Re: Food Price Watch Thread

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Yuli Ban wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 8:28 pm
I think rising costs will justify investing in indoor/vertical farming in the same manner rising oil prices lead to the expansion of high-cost offshore and shale oil drilling. The hydroponic technology as well as other critical technologies such as LED lighting have come a long way in the past few years. I expect as this food crisis progresses, we'll see greater money flows into investing and developing indoor farms.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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Yuli Ban
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It will, but the cold fact remains that building vertical farms will take time, time we don't have. It's going to feel stressful for a little while.
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raklian
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Re: Food Price Watch Thread

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Yuli Ban wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 10:22 pm It will, but the cold fact remains that building vertical farms will take time, time we don't have. It's going to feel stressful for a little while.
You're probably right. I still think we'll come out of the coming crisis in a better position to blunt the next one whenever it may be. I think blockchain technology will play a critical role in ways that is not obvious to us today.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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funkervogt
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Re: Food Price Watch Thread

Post by funkervogt »

Once household robots are common, people will be able to tell them to create backyard gardens, which will boost global food supplies and give people more control over the inputs that go into their own foods.

https://www.theseasonalhomestead.com/th ... er-acre-1/
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