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

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

#141

Post by log1_aa »

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)

While the largest bulk carrier ships can indeed carry 300,000 tons of cargo, these ships are usually used to transport iron ore or other ores. It is very rare that wheat is transported on ships that carry more than 70,000 tons. The main reason is that neither origin or destination port logistics allow for larger shipments, and most buyers cannot store such large quantities of wheat.

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

#142

Post by log1_aa »

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…

The photo shows pasture land, not winter wheat. The wheat crop in Ukraine is almost 100% winter wheat that is planted in the fall. Source: https://www.fas.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/Ukraine...

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

#143

Post by throwaway6532 »

KarlKemp wrote: post #111
drexlspivey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is climate change preventing Egypt to import wheat from India instead of Russia?

By causing a previous rise in food prices in the region, which caused a hungry merchant to immolate himself, which caused widespread protests and, ultimately, unrest including the Syrian war, which allowed Putin to test his air force, creating the smug attitude that he could invade the Ukraine.

The previous rise in food prices also being attributable to the Russian heatwave of 2010 being the link to climate change.

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

#144

Post by throwaway6532 »

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?

In general if you were to take away synthetic fertilizers and rely only on traditional agriculture without over-pumping water from aquifers you start to realize that the population of planet earth is only possible to sustain at its current levels with the current system and if/when parts of that start to go away then some of the people start to go away too.

The current situation highlights the reliance also on global supply chains functioning properly. These are fun times.

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

#145

Post by throwaway6532 »

phreeza wrote: post #12
ginko wrote: post #3

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...

Presumably they already bought wheat futures for a significant fraction of demand, and so it is up to the sellers to organize the actual wheat, possibly at a loss.

They have 4 months worth of strategic reserves and I read somewhere planned deliveries will bring that up to 8 months worth. I think the danger is in future if those 8 months worth get burnt through and replacements don't come. That's still an unknown at this point, but it's what I'm personally watching out for in terms of being able to see around the corner to what may be coming next.

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

#146

Post by syntheweave »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #105
nradov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that unlike microchips, wheat can't be stored indefinitely. Eventually it rots. And reserve storage capacity is very limited; they have to make room for the next crop. The worldwide wheat market is huge and fragmented so no one can really corner the market through hoarding. An electronics manufacturer might not be able to easily substitute a '328 for another microcontroller, but an Egyptian baker ca…

> unlike microchips, wheat can't be stored indefinitely I'm actually unsure which depreciates quicker: wheat or silicon? On one hand, wheat is perishable. On the other hand, silicon becomes obsolete.

What we know says that obsolete silicon trickles down to poorer countries, e.g. the early 8-bit microcomputers saw continued use in the former Soviet states into the mid-1990's, a full decade after obsolescence had started to hit in North America with the introduction of 16-bit machines.

Of course, there's some leapfrogging that also takes place. Most of Africa jumped straight into adoption of mobile phones without really going through an era of cheap consumer micros.

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

#147

Post by throwaway6532 »

groby_b wrote: post #18
VLM wrote: post #7

The point is the economy is currently based on something hits the news, hoard hoard hoard, price explodes, empty shelves and high profits. Happened to TP a couple years ago and is in process with microcontroller chips and will be happening soon with food. People hear story on news, think there will be empty shelves, buy a multi-year supply of boxed Mac n Cheese, the shelves are indeed empty, more people think there w…

> The point is the economy is currently based on something hits the news, hoard hoard hoard, price explodes, empty shelves and high profits. Given that that extends well beyond individual behaviour (Wheat futures[1] are currently bonkers), this raises the question if the claim that "capitalism is the optimal way to allocate resources" is really true at least for the current version of capitalism. This extends well be…

I guess markets are functional proportional to their level of certainty with respect to future events. Information is a reduction in uncertainty, so if you are missing information you need in order to make pricing decisions because it's at this stage unknown, then you have no rational basis of which to act, but since you still need to act the only way to do so is irrationally. Makes perfect sense to me.

TL;DR sometimes markets fail. Also all complex systems are nearly always in a state of partial failure. Economy is no different.

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

#148

Post by randomdata »

log1_aa wrote: post #142
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…

The photo shows pasture land, not winter wheat. The wheat crop in Ukraine is almost 100% winter wheat that is planted in the fall. Source: https://www.fas.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/Ukraine...

While I tend to agree, especially since the photo appears to be of military training and not actual combat, here[1] is a photo of known winter wheat. This photo was taken a little bit later in the year, so the leaf is more pronounced and greener than you'd expect of the current crop, but even then is the casual observer looking for pictures of war going to notice? They really don't look all that different to me without stopping to really study the details and the first photo doesn't have much detail to work with. I would bet that this[2] is a field of wheat seeded into soybean stubble, but how can you really tell for sure?

[1] https://imgur.com/a/MII3Sc1

[2] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPMuO-OXwAsWAuU?format=jpg

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

#149

Post by jelliclesfarm »

stubish wrote: post #139
xbar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Egypt gets most of its food aid from Saudi. Saudi is entirely reliant on wheat imports and tried to grow wheat in the desert to no avail.

In the past decade, Egypt has been reliant from Saudi, UAE and Kuwait. This has always been so.

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

#150

Post by Dylan16807 »

jacobolus wrote: post #73
ineedasername wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What am I missing? Shifting suppliers on this scale in normal times isn't a quick process. Right now global logistics are still a complete & total mess. With great uncertainty, $cost becomes somewhat disconnected from supply. Right now futures are up about 40%. Availability won't mean much if it isn't affordable, and countries need to lock in supply because it's not really a JIT distribution system (see previous poi…

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 you ship your grain N times farther, you need N times as many ships to make the same number of trips.

Which would be really bad if it was a global increase, but when it's a tiny sliver of the market you only need a sliver of spare capacity.

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