World grain stocks running low.

[david dissadent]

US stocks lowest for 55 years according to this article in CNN.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/12/news/economy/bc.apfn.cropreport.ap/index.htm?section=money_news_economy

While the international grain council warns of a halt on exports.

This however is not a new problem but one that has been noted over time as this article last year documents falling stocks

The trend is also documented in this graph for the USDA

Compaired with production figures.

So the fall in stocks appears to be due to increase in demand rather than drought. This increase in demand has three sources, increase demand for feed for animals as an increasingly wealthy China eats more meat, the huge increase in demand for corn for biofuel in the states jacking up the price of corn to a point that normal corn consumers such as pig farmers are now having to switch to grain and increase in international wealth meaning more people want to eat more food.

Food inflation is causing political problems in China and destabalising other regimes around the world. Burma started off about fuel but as the world moves from worrying about the price of petrol to grain political instability is likely to increase dramaticaly.

 

[zoltan]

Having read the some R.maltheus and Jared Diamonds
"Collapse" Recently, the food aspect is so much more important than the terminally tedious Peak Oil discussions ( nothing personal posters on the thread, its just somethinmg which cant be answered ATM ).

 

[Crispy]

I swear I read recently that we're actually now eating more than we're producing - cutting into reserves. Sounds fucking scary if you ask me.

Enforced vegetarianism should help

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Plenty to eat if you know where to look.

 

[nino_savatte]

Another "let's panic" thread from DD.

 

[two sheds]

Another "let's panic" thread from DD.

Perhaps, but if you're on a train that's headed full tilt at a brick wall it's no use looking back to the other passengers and saying 'Well we're all right so far ' .

A bit of panic might be the correct reaction in the right quarters - much better than ignoring it.

 

[nino_savatte]

Perhaps, but if you're on a train that's headed full tilt at a brick wall it's no use looking back to the other passengers and saying 'Well we're all right so far ' .

A bit of panic might be the correct reaction in the right quarters - much better than ignoring it.

Not sure I agree with that. It's panic that has caused some of the worst disasters: runs on banks etc.

 

[Fruitloop]

Having read the some R.maltheus and Jared Diamonds
"Collapse" Recently, the food aspect is so much more important than the terminally tedious Peak Oil discussions ( nothing personal posters on the thread, its just somethinmg which cant be answered ATM ).

Aren't they somewhat related?

 

[Crispy]

Aren't they somewhat related?

A fair bit, yeah.

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Aren't they somewhat related?

Absolutely.

We eat oil.

The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure oil, not food. There's a little joke in this. Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil.

 

[Brainaddict]

With any luck the US will stop sending their crappy, self-interested food aid to Africa where it undercuts local production

 

[two sheds]

Not sure I agree with that. It's panic that has caused some of the worst disasters: runs on banks etc.

Nope, runs on banks were *caused* by the dodgy loans the banks made - the resulting withdrawals were the correct and sane reaction cos otherwise people ran a real risk of losing their money .

I'm not saying politicians *should* panic - I'm saying they shouldn't just do nothing like they are doing. Information like this - if correct - is essential to the choices we need to make now. It's because politicians ignored information like this 40 years ago that we have the problems now. A relatively small corrective action now saves having to panic later on.

 

[nino_savatte]

Nope, runs on banks were *caused* by the dodgy loans the banks made - the resulting withdrawals were the correct and sane reaction cos otherwise people ran a real risk of losing their money .

I'm not saying politicians *should* panic - I'm saying they shouldn't just do nothing like they are doing. Information like this - if correct - is essential to the choices we need to make now. It's because politicians ignored information like this 40 years ago that we have the problems now. A relatively small corrective action now saves having to panic later on.

Perhaps I chose my example unwisely. The press (particularly the tabloids) tend to whip up panics all the time - health scares, moral panics etc. The last panic iirc, was Bird Flu.

 

[two sheds]

Perhaps I chose my example unwisely. The press (particularly the tabloids) tend to whip up panics all the time - health scares, moral panics etc. The last panic iirc, was Bird Flu.

Point taken, but I think you chose the wrong thread to criticise dd on, too. The quotes are from economics and other mainstream sources - dd's only panic-inducing sentence is in the last para.

Food inflation is causing political problems in China and destabalising other regimes around the world. Burma started off about fuel but as the world moves from worrying about the price of petrol to grain political instability is likely to increase dramaticaly.

Sounds fair enough to say that rising food costs in developing countries could dramatically increase political instability - warning rather than panic inducing I'd have said.

 

[newbie]

With any luck the US will stop sending their crappy, self-interested food aid to Africa where it undercuts local production

Indeed. the increase in world demand, if it continues, could be the lever that encourages a return to the land from the sprawling slum cities, with that labour power being used to reclaim agricultural land that has been been unproductive in the past.

 

[Poi E]

With any luck the US will stop sending their crappy, self-interested food aid to Africa where it undercuts local production

Bingo! I was in SA recently and farms are falling by the wayside because of cheap US imports.

 

[david dissadent]

Another "let's panic" thread from DD.

The Economist covers some of the same ground.

The NYT indicates USAid is buying half of the food it did 7 years ago because of inflation.


We are currently running out of food as global demand exceeds supply, but not at the moment becuase of over eating or poor harvest, but because of more meat being ate and vast amounts going to biofuels. There is time yet to reverse many of the policies and trends that are seeing us eat away our reserves. But we cannot pressure for change if no one knows there is a problem.

 

[nino_savatte]

Point taken, but I think you chose the wrong thread to criticise dd on, too. The quotes are from economics and other mainstream sources - dd's only panic-inducing sentence is in the last para.



Sounds fair enough to say that rising food costs in developing countries could dramatically increase political instability - warning rather than panic inducing I'd have said.

I think economics and economists are part of the problem.

 

[david dissadent]

Perhaps I chose my example unwisely. The press (particularly the tabloids) tend to whip up panics all the time - health scares, moral panics etc. The last panic iirc, was Bird Flu.

If its an unesescary panic post data to the contrary.

 

[camouflage]

It's all down to the same looming energy crisis as far as I'm concerned.

Of course oil is currenty integral to food production, we've a population of billions and our primary energy source remains black goo. Food production is just another set of ways in which we're vulnerable to energy shortfalls. I agree with Crispy though, more vegetarianism would help.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

It's all down to the same looming energy crisis as far as I'm concerned.

Of course oil is currenty integral to food production, we've a population of billions and our primary energy source remains black goo. Food production is just another set of ways in which we're vulnerable to energy shortfalls. I agree with Crispy though, more vegetarianism would help.

The other thing that would help is to get rid of nice green manicured lawns and replace them with either with native plants or edible landscaping. The more food you can produce out your backdoor, the better it is for energy use, the environment, and human food production.

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Yuwipi, earlier:

 

[free spirit]

The other thing that would help is to get rid of nice green manicured lawns and replace them with either with native plants or edible landscaping. The more food you can produce out your backdoor, the better it is for energy use, the environment, and human food production.

pretty much how they got round the problem in Cuba

 

[rich!]

I think economics and economists are part of the problem.

sadly, we need so much oil to produce one economist they're not really efficient to use to feed the population.

 

[nino_savatte]

sadly, we need so much oil to produce one economist they're not really efficient to use to feed the population.

Ain't that the truth!

 

[nino_savatte]

If its an unesescary panic post data to the contrary.

The thing is, we as a planet have got our priorities wrong. The current system of capitalism is geared towards over-production, waste and death. We now have economists and others talking about the need to grow plants for bio fuel but the understanding of energy requirements appears to revolve around the internal combustion engine (it's so 20th century). Furthermore the current drive for the production of bio-fuels, which is meant to address carbon emission and the reduction of oil reserves, ignores the need for food production. Instead, we have richer countries dumping their cheaper products on the markets of so-called developing countries. This is what is commonly called "Free Trade".

The current way in which the science of economics is practised -at least according to my observations - is narrow and orbits the sphere of commodity production and the consumption of those commodities (produce meaningless crap for people to buy and give them a justification for doing so) at the expense of other goods.

Adam Curtis is right: there are two types of people who are irrational and who work in their own self-interest: they are psychopaths and economists.

I'm sure an economist will come along and put me right.

 

[newbie]

We are currently running out of food as global demand exceeds supply,

supply is elastic. Massively increasing world demand can be met by a return to agriculture in places which have been uneconomic in the face of US/EU overproduction.


Mexico is a good example. US farmers have been dumping maize there for years, driving the peasant farmers off the land and into the slums. The very recent demand for biofuel led to a spike in maize/corn prices and food riots in mexico. The response has been a 10% increase in Mexican corn production in a year, as fallow land is brought back into production.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN2335951920070323

 

[paimei01]

Not any land can be brought into production, whenever someone wants.
Here in Romania there is a law (not always respected), whenever someone builds something he has to remove the top soil and keep it, use it again or donate it to the city, because top soil forms at a rate of 1..2 cm every 50 years and it's considered a natural resource.
Maybe other countries have similar laws.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915

Walk from the prairie to the field, and you probably will step down about six feet, as if the land had been stolen from beneath you. Settlers' accounts of the prairie conquest mention a sound, a series of pops, like pistol shots, the sound of stout grass roots breaking before a moldboard plow. A robbery was in progress.

 

[RhymnRzn]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-10-15-wheat-prices_N.htm

PORTLAND, Ore. — The Baker & Spice bakery paid $19 for a 50-pound bag of flour in August. By the end of September, co-owner Julie Richardson was staring at $27 a bag, reading startling messages from her supplier warning of dwindling world wheat stocks and wondering how long she could hold out before raising prices.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

US farmers have been dumping maize there for years, driving the peasant farmers off the land and into the slums.

The same thing has been happening to family farmers in the US too. The city I live in has tripled in size due to people being forced off the land and into the cities. Some counties in Nebraska have average incomes of only $3000 per year. Usually what happens here is that the land people are forced off of is either sold in bankruptcy sales or rented to the large corporate producers.