Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 207 posts

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#131

Post by JasonFruit »

nradov wrote: post #61
JasonFruit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wheat properly stored keeps for at least thirty years without noticeable degradation[0]. I'm not sure how easy that is at scale, but on first glance it seems not impractical. [0] https://extension.usu.edu/preserve-the-harvest/research/stor...

It's easy to store small quantities of wheat for years at home, but that's irrelevant to this situation. We're talking about grain elevators and warehouses.

I'm not convinced that an airtight grain storage facility filled with carbon dioxide is impractical. A quick search turns up several manufacturers of airtight grain silos.

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#132

Post by littlestymaar »

nradov wrote: post #61
JasonFruit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wheat properly stored keeps for at least thirty years without noticeable degradation[0]. I'm not sure how easy that is at scale, but on first glance it seems not impractical. [0] https://extension.usu.edu/preserve-the-harvest/research/stor...

It's easy to store small quantities of wheat for years at home, but that's irrelevant to this situation. We're talking about grain elevators and warehouses.

These places have regulated hygrometry for exactly this reason.

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#133

Post by anonAndOn »

randomdata wrote: post #56
anonAndOn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ukraine plants their wheat in the spring This aligns with every single combat photo I've seen thus far. I don't think I've seen one field of winter wheat. So the shortfall is not in winter wheat, but in the types planted right now.

> This aligns with every single combat photo I've seen thus far. I don't think I've seen one field of winter wheat. 1. How many photos from the war have you seen of farmland? It's not exactly the prime battleground. 2. We can assume that you can recognize winter wheat at this stage from photos not focused on the crop? It, of course, looks like someone's dead lawn when it first emerges from it's winter rest. Hard to d…

1. Hundreds. Twitter and Telegram are your best bet for field kills.

2. Does it? I've never seen a lawn planted in 7-8" rows.

Regardless of the species of plant in the photo, does that look like a tilled field to you?

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#134

Post by littlestymaar »

JasonFruit wrote: post #131
nradov wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to store small quantities of wheat for years at home, but that's irrelevant to this situation. We're talking about grain elevators and warehouses.

I'm not convinced that an airtight grain storage facility filled with carbon dioxide is impractical. A quick search turns up several manufacturers of airtight grain silos.

In fact, you don't even need the silo to be air-tight: moisture is the enemy. If you can keep you silo dry (including when air temperature change, which is really the only challenge you would face, for example in the ancient world), you're good[1], it won't rot.

Humans have known how to keep wheat for several millennia !

[1]: at least if the goal is to eat the wheat. Replanting the seeds will become much harder after time passes.

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#135

Post by sreejithr »

Ancapistani wrote: post #66
thepasswordis wrote: post #35

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 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. I'm the _last_ person to defend the actions of states, but I don't see an obvious way the "West" - meaning the US/NATO/Europe - could have responded in a way that avoided this once it began. > I'm sorry to be so cynical about this, but it has been like watching a slow m…

> these absolutely idiotic sanctions we are imposing on Russia will lead to none of our stated foreign policy goals, and only suffering for the poor.

I agree. Sanctions won't work till everyone applies it. Currently only the Anglosphere, Europe, Japan and SK are parties. That's far from the whole world.

Countries like India, African countries etc who aren't as privileged as the West may not be interested in sanctions when they have billions to feed.

And applying secondary sanctions on poor people is cruel and would eventually lead to distrust in USD and the western order which is already at its weakest. For eg, can you apply sanctions on crisis-hit Srilanka when the country is broke to the point of starvation?

This is NOT good for US hegemony. It will lead to a multi-polar world. If China/India can offer an alternative without the sanctions minefield, the poor countries would take it.

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#136

Post by randomdata »

anonAndOn wrote: post #133
randomdata wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This aligns with every single combat photo I've seen thus far. I don't think I've seen one field of winter wheat. 1. How many photos from the war have you seen of farmland? It's not exactly the prime battleground. 2. We can assume that you can recognize winter wheat at this stage from photos not focused on the crop? It, of course, looks like someone's dead lawn when it first emerges from it's winter rest. Hard to d…

1. Hundreds. Twitter and Telegram are your best bet for field kills. 2. Does it? I've never seen a lawn planted in 7-8" rows. Regardless of the species of plant in the photo, does that look like a tilled field to you?

> Does it? I've never seen a lawn planted in 7-8" rows.

I've never seen 7.5" rows be row-able at that stage unless you line yourself up just perfectly. Given that the photographers aren't focused on the crop itself, what are the chances? With sufficient resolution of the photo maybe you can still tell, but someone's random cell phone photo isn't going to give you that. Even a top of the line camera scaled down to web resolutions is going to lose that information.

> Regardless of the species of plant in the photo, does that look like a tilled field to you?

No, but why would you till it? Wheat is the easiest crop to no-till out there. Even the moldboard mafia no-till their wheat. You'd have to be dealing with some heavy compaction or other issues with the land to justify that fuel burn just to grow poverty grass.

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#137

Post by stubish »

pempem wrote: post #14
awb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author frames the problem less as a wheat production problem and more as a shipping problem. > 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. FYI, MENA = Middle East / North Africa > What these pl…

A sincere question: Would it not then be helpful to support these new or temporary supply chains as a war effort? Shouldn't that fall under humanitarian aid?

I think China may step up here, as it is a great opportunity to promote their One Belt, One Road Initiative. And they will be one of the countries with excess wheat to sell. And it will make Australia look stupid if they have wheat but no boats and no signature on the agreement.

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#138

Post by ineedasername »

KarlKemp wrote: post #108
jacobolus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grain is shipped in large specialized dry bulk cargo ships. It’s a lot closer to ship from Ukraine to, say, Egypt than to ship from Australia or Canada or even India. If you ship your grain N times farther, you need N times as many ships to make the same number of trips. Those ships don’t exist or can’t be mustered on short notice, so you have to use some other kind of (less-specialized, less efficient and more expen…

If anyone else is wondering, the largest ships carry 300,000 DTW, which is 300,000,000 kg each of which has 3400 kCal. Daily caloric intake of 2,000 may be suitable average, meaning that one ship can supply all energy needs for 1.5 million people and one year. (3700 * 300000 * 1000) / (365 * 2000)

Keep in mind that grains are not only used for human consumption though. It's also used for animals. Egypt has 10M cattle alone [1] and a 1,000lb animal needs roughly 7x the calories as a person. [2] So that same largest cargo ship will only feed about ~200,000 cattle, requiring 50 such ships to feed the cattle population.

They produce about 1.8 billion heads of poultry [3], and in total only about 1/3 of their animal feed requirements are produced domestically [1].

Animal feed appears to be in a different category from other grain imports for human consumption, probably because it really is a separate product containing a mixture of grains and nutrients from other sources. Unfortunately though, much of it is also imported from Ukraine [4] which has banned all exports of grains for now, and it's probably a reasonable assumption that this will include grains used in animal feed, since the issue is the food security of their own people.

Eqypt is going to need a lot more newly-sourced grains or grain-based products, a large # of container ships full of it.

[1] https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadRepo...

[2] https://cals.arizona.edu/forageandgrain/sites/cals.arizona.e...

[3] https://crimsonpublishers.com/cras/pdf/CRAS.000502.pdf

[4] https://www.feednavigator.com/Article/2016/09/19/USDA-Egypti...

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#139

Post by stubish »

xbar wrote: post #60
dustymcp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is ironic given they where the grain suppliers of ancient rome? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae

Why is it no longer possible for Egypt to grow its own wheat?

There are far, far too many people in Egypt. Egypt has had plans for decades to irrigate large parts of the desert to help solve the problem, but so far it hasn't gotten much further than the planning stages.

Re: Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

#140

Post by jtbayly »

keneda7 wrote: post #81
jtbayly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most wheat was planted 4 months ago, according to the author.

Contrary to what the US media and current US administration are saying, we had major issues before Russia invaded Ukraine. This idea that the Russia invasion is responsible for all these problems is ludicrous. Yes, it has made them worse but it is not the root cause. The fertilizer shortage was happening at the end of last year. You know the 4 months ago you quoted. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25…

Some farmers were delaying buying fertilizer, according to that article. Nothing in that article indicates that they were not planting because of a "shortage." Prices were simply higher and some people were betting on them going up and some were betting on them going down.

I'm in agreement with the idea that this isn't primarily caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Read the author's other thread on fertilizer for more context on that.

She says it's primarily a shipping problem, not a production of fertilizer problem. Which tracks with the idea that this is simply another example of the global supply chain snarling things up.

Post reply on HN