121–130 of 207 posts
> But there's no guarantee OP actually knew what it means! And the folks repeating it definitely don't know. : /
I wish everyone took this to heart.
I absolutely despise things like this. The war in Ukraine, amplified by the West's anemic and at best useless sanctions, have likely led to a famine which will effect millions of people. Yeah, us sitting here in our offices in the richest country in the world, arguably the people who helped cause this, won't be effected. Maybe our food prices go up a tiny bit. The people in developing countries, like usual, will now…
> The people in developing countries, like usual, will now become victims of starvation, which will lead to revolutions and civil war, and ultimately more suffering.
> Somebody's twitter thread about how acksually this isn't a bad thing offers me
The Twitter thread very explicitly states that this is an extremely bad bad thing that will cause famine in specific developing countries and that the actual resulting issue we need to address to prevent it is logistics. From the thread:
> Again, specific places are facing EXTREMELY REAL wheat supply problems. MENA usually sources from Ukraine. Switching supply chains to India & other sources takes extra time, & if they're further away from India and Ukraine, it takes longer for supplies to get there.
> What these places are facing is a SHIPPING shortage.
> Not a lack of enough wheat in the world.
> Their food supply chain problems are still dangerous. A local, shipping-induced shortage that lasts a week can still kill you.
> To solve that problem, we gotta start with being clear on what the problem IS!
> We haven't! We decided it's a wheat shortage, not a shipping shortage.
> ...
> And that's how a 0.9% shortfall in global wheat production, that farmers already fixed 4 months ago, turned into a global commodity panic that solved nothing
> while a very real shipping problem continues to threaten people's lives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it no longer possible for Egypt to grow its own wheat?
Egypt is mostly desert, the only arable land is on the banks of the Nile.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ukraine is now offering that to Russia I've not been watching this as closely for the past week or two as I was previously, but I've not seen this. Particularly the "denazification" point seems unlikely to be agreed to by Ukraine. Do you have a source for this claim?
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-sets-ceasefire-... Of course the “denazification” thing is dropped. It was nonsense propaganda to begin with. I’m curious where you are following this? This was absolutely huge news at the beginning of this week. It’s really weird to me that wherever you are closely following this didn’t cover it.
It’s where I _was_ following it. Work has gotten in the way lately and I’ve had very little time for current events.
> Not a lack of enough wheat in the world.
That doesn't make it any better, most of the famines that took place before the industrial revolution happened because of transport shortages, sometimes a certain part of a kingdom would experience famine while another one, located at the opposite geographical end, would have been just fine.
Now, it depends how fast and if those transport/supply issues can be solved in a reasonable amount of time, I would imagine this is not as simple as firing up a new instance on AWS (let's say) if the instance you had on Azure had died out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Leaving aside the issue that trucks can't move stuff across oceans, how do you get the extra trucks to where they are needed?
As a Romanian I visited Lviv a few years ago. There were some disaster potholes right past the border. It took 1 hour to go through say, 10km with a small car. Unless those roads get fixed, I expect only military or otherwise rugged trucks to be able to pass quickly. Otherwise, you'd need a lot of trucks to get a significant flow of goods. Example: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.0388842,22.9469939,3a,75y,33...
Also Romanian in here, from the Southern part of the country where we happen to grow lots of wheat. We're also close by the Danube, which helps a lot with transport (companies like Cargill have invested massively during the last decade in here).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the shortfall in exported wheat is ~1% of global production, and farmers in other countries (India, USA) already are planting more to make up for it, what is preventing Egypt and others from importing from those other countries to replace Ukraine/Russian exports? What am I missing?
> and farmers in other countries (India, USA) already are planting more to make up for it Are they? Fertilizer prices are up 3x-5x, depending on where you look, due to Russian export restrictions, so for many farmers it's cheaper to wait it out and give the soil a rest. Planting reports have only started trickling in, so we don't have a good global view of what has been planted in spring 2022.
That's nice and all but it doesn't really help countries like Egypt that import over 60% of the wheat they consume.[1] [1] https://theconversation.com/russia-ukraine-crisis-poses-a-se...
I personally know people in the US who are buying large quantities of wheat and other food in preparation for the pending food crisis. They expect food prices in general to go through the roof because 1/4 of the world's wheat has suddenly gone missing.
While there will be famines because of this war, if Sarah Taber's numbers are accurate then the reporting within the United States has been horribly irresponsible, and it's important to call it out and spread the real numbers.
I read this thread a couple days ago and managed to get through it despite the annoying tone. I think the author is correct now (for the current and upcoming crops) but I worry they're failing to account for larger systemic issues like fertilizer price spikes (and yes I read their fertilizer thread as well), currency issues (inflation, logistics of precursors) and while they acknowledge the shipping issues can kill p…
The author does not say everything is fine, she says the public focus is in the wrong place. We don’t need more wheat, we need changes in shipping. We need to fund logistics, not planting.
A country is really sovereign if it produces enough food for its own population.
One of the main reason of the food dependency of Northern African countries is ... the EU policies.
Huge amounts of public money are given to farmers each year so that their selling prices are competitive on the global markets.
Those global prices are lower than local production cost in Northern Africa.
So the European Union basically made these countries dependent through its agriculture policies.
Egypt has also a very large population for its very limited arable soil. But Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco have plenty land and water enough to feed their population. And yet they are dependent on food importations to survive.
So the Egyptian case is specific and hides a larger truth. Many West African countries are dependent as well to subsidized European meat. Local farmers can't compete.
Each country should be allowed to put tariffs on food importation high enough so that local production is enough to feed the country.
The USA, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zeland, Ukraine, Russia and the EU just won't allow it.
The EU put a large fight to protect its farmers against competition from the aforementioned countries. And that was and still is a good strategy. But it goes too far, as described before.
We need to stop building such a fragile global economic system. Free markets are simply NOT efficient to ensure access vital goods and services.
Self-sustainability for vital needs should be a priority, at a minimum on the country scale, but the smaller scale possible is always preferable: that's resilience, hence sovereignty.
Food, water, shelter, security... and love are the humane true necessities. A country should be able to guarantee this to its population, whatever happens : large war, pandemy, unseen solar eruption that kill most electronic devices, extreme and unseen natural disaster due to climate dereliction.
We are not ready to face uncertain times.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the shortfall in exported wheat is ~1% of global production, and farmers in other countries (India, USA) already are planting more to make up for it, what is preventing Egypt and others from importing from those other countries to replace Ukraine/Russian exports? What am I missing?
> and farmers in other countries (India, USA) already are planting more to make up for it Are they? Fertilizer prices are up 3x-5x, depending on where you look, due to Russian export restrictions, so for many farmers it's cheaper to wait it out and give the soil a rest. Planting reports have only started trickling in, so we don't have a good global view of what has been planted in spring 2022.