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‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

wsj.com

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Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#81

Post by dehrmann »

wallacoloo wrote: post #56
ploden wrote: post #30

Maybe we should end the government mandate to burn corn in car engines. Biden seems more pro-ethanol than Trump, I have no idea why.

i always assumed ethanol production was encouraged by the govt precisely to spur excess production of corn so as to make our food production more robust. i.e. during a bad year of food production, halt ethanol production and redirect that excess of corn back into the food supply; crisis averted. is that not the case?

There was a time when I wasn't a fan of the government subsidizing farmers with policies like that, but the cost of underproduction of food is too high, and it's not a problem markets will solve, so it makes sense for governments to step in and overproduce food.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#82

Post by nostromo »

dehrmann wrote: post #78
nostromo wrote: post #61

Print several trillion dollars to induce demand while shutting down industry worldwide off and on for two years, which reduces supply. It’s obvious this will cause prices to rise dramatically.

I don't think the printed money induced food or fertilizer demand. It's not like laptops or dumbbells. The article calls out higher input prices due to energy and mineral costs. The pandemic didn't induce energy demand (it did cause it to yoyo), and the mineral costs are due, in part, to sanctions (the 2, 3, and 4th producers are Russia, Belarus, and China). Non-fertilizer uses are only 15% of demand, so this really…

> I don't think the printed money induced food demand

Food purchases are way up since Covid.

https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/food/united-states

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#83

Post by dehrmann »

nostromo wrote: post #82
dehrmann wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the printed money induced food or fertilizer demand. It's not like laptops or dumbbells. The article calls out higher input prices due to energy and mineral costs. The pandemic didn't induce energy demand (it did cause it to yoyo), and the mineral costs are due, in part, to sanctions (the 2, 3, and 4th producers are Russia, Belarus, and China). Non-fertilizer uses are only 15% of demand, so this really…

> I don't think the printed money induced food demand Food purchases are way up since Covid. https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/food/united-states

Do you have a source that isn't paywalled?

Their "Net sales of US Foods from 2012 to 2020" wasn't, but it also said sales were down in 2020.

What makes comparisons tricky is people didn't eat out as much, so that cuts spending on some metrics. On others, commercial kitchens are more efficient and buy from wholesalers, so that lowers a different metric. But people consume fewer calories when cooking for themselves.

My main point is that for everyone but the lower 5%, I'd be surprised if they got a stimulus check and ate more calories because of it. I work in tech and make decent money. Maybe I buy the organic berries instead of the regular ones, but I'm not buying twice as many baskets because I have more money. I still only needed 3.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#84

Post by noduerme »

woodruffw wrote: post #74
noduerme wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this presupposes that the inefficient diversion to animal feed would work itself out in favor of keeping everyone fed if less grain were available. Since the inefficient systems of production and consumption are already deeply entrenched in areas with the highest savings and the most buffer against instability, there's no reason to think they would be the first thing to collapse, or even that the economics might…

I don't think there's any supposition of this sort in my comment: I haven't committed to any particular opinion on how we would (or whether it's politically feasible to) distribute the agricultural products that normally go into animal feed. Contemporary economic pressures, as you've correctly noted, don't help! All I've observed is that the GP's conclusion doesn't necessarily extend from the data they've presented:…

Fair enough, but we could only do that if there were some master plan to reallocate the land used for animal feed, the processing, the innumerable distribution systems that get food to people. Saying this is like saying there's enough energy from the sun, wind and hydro to let us go off fossil fuels. It would be true if you could wave a wand and redesign the whole system from scratch. But that observation doesn't make it any less of a crisis if the system as-is begins to break down. The trouble with a lot of these idealistic proclamations that "we have the ability ...if" is that they don't take into account the messy realities, and so the only purpose they serve is virtue-signaling. Tl;dr the only useful solutions in this will involve ways to produce or more efficiently distribute more fertilizer, not to say that we could or should get along without it.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#85

Post by esarbe »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #51
gruez wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are options besides chemical fertilizers. But as it relates to this problem (ie. food getting more expensive), your suggestion doesn't make any sense. Considering that the methods you described aren't widely used, I think it's safe to say that they're more expensive than using synthetic fertilizers. Therefore if we implemented that suggestion we wouldn't have higher food prices... because the food prices would…

We would also need more land to rotate and water. We are running out of both. Esp in the developing world the article speaks about..

There are techniques to cut down water consumption by quite a lot. As for the land; we'll have to invest quite a bit more in ecosystem restoration in the future.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#86

Post by bryanlarsen »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #62
bryanlarsen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? I suspect the number is closer to 20% than 80.

FAO’s SOFA report (2014a) estimated, based on an analysis of just 30 countries using the 2000 round of agricultural census data, that there are approximately 500 million family farmers in the world who produce 80% of the world’s food From: https://pure.coventry.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/11930738/1...

So? My father in law runs a family farm that is over 4 square miles and his neighbor runs one that is over 40. The neighboring Hutterite colony is even bigger. All are very heavily industrialized.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#87

Post by damnesian »

It's time to bring back the old practices of crop rotation and use of the chain of life in a healthy ecosystem to manage overgrowth of pest crops. In the old times, farmers depended on birds, insects and rodents to control pests Humanity took tens of thousands of years to perfect agriculture. It's taken humanity in the modern chemical-dependent age less than a hundred years of monoculture to push it to the brink of collapse.

Granted, yields will be lower. But instead of growing seed corn and soy beans, farmers need to diversify and bring back species that are unique to their regions- that were carefully selected and bred to grow best in that area. Did you know one in the early 20th century, one of the greatest exporters of apples was the state of Iowa? Not now.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#88

Post by ldiracdelta »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #45
ch4s3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> poisoning waterways This hasn't been true for years. Most algal blooms around the US at least are caused by lawn runoff.

Source please. The quantity of fertilizer used on farms dwarfs that used on lawns.

The knowledge and professionalism and price sensitivity of the farmer dwarfs that of thr average home owner. How many nights of sleep does the average home owner lose each year obsessing over the amount of fertilizer and cost of that fertilizer? Meanwhile that actually happens to most farmers. They obsess and endlessly talk about how to cut their fertilizer and pesticides to the bare minimum they think they can handle so they can maybe own their farms for the next generation. You think they're throwing away product by over applying fertilizer? These guys walk their fields once a week and some once a day. They notice things like soil and fertilizer runoff.

Re: ‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

#89

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

damnesian wrote: post #87

It's time to bring back the old practices of crop rotation and use of the chain of life in a healthy ecosystem to manage overgrowth of pest crops. In the old times, farmers depended on birds, insects and rodents to control pests Humanity took tens of thousands of years to perfect agriculture. It's taken humanity in the modern chemical-dependent age less than a hundred years of monoculture to push it to the brink of c…

This won’t work unless large numbers of people can go back to being farmers and leave their pointless lives in bullshit jobs sitting at a computer looking at Facebook all day. We would have to pay farmers a real wage again and pay more for healthy food that tastes great and doesn’t kill us. It sounds like a beautiful future and I’ve been contemplating and wishing that could happen for humanity a lot recently. I recommend the documentary Ingredients if you haven’t seen it. It’s on Tubi for free. It changed the way I look at food and the world.
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