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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

#171

Post by ncmncm »

paganel wrote: post #126
danuker wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's why the Russians de facto imposing a blockade on Odessa and generally speaking on the Ukrainian ports at the Black Sea is so important to them. 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).

Cargill is in the running for world's most evil corporation. Competition is stiff and enthusiastic.

Nestle? BASF/Monsanto? Exxon? CCP? Halliburton? We might not recognize the name of the leader.

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

#172

Post by thehappypm »

adolgert wrote: post #31

Famine is caused by _local_ supply shortages. The Dust Bowl in the US was a 30% wheat shortage, but it can happen from even less shortfall if transportation is a problem. The US weaponized wheat stem rust against Russia's wheat crops during the cold war, and they were hoping the weapon would reduce total yield by 15% in order to cause major damage.

Source on that?

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

#173

Post by ngold »

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...

On a side tangent, wasn't Egypt the bread basket of rome? What happened there? Did the Nile dry up?

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

#174

Post by csee »

groby_b wrote: post #23
csee wrote: post #16

I quickly googled what the annual wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia are and got a much bigger number than the tweet suggests.

You might want to (much less quickly) figure out what percentage of their exports is affected by their war, how the war & sanctions affect transportation & trade partners, and what the end result of that is. Nobody has stopped exports completely. Nobody has stopped planting wheat.

Sure but that would lead to a low confidence estimate given the war has just started, it's not clear whether the ports will be captured, it's not clear whether the sowing season will be disrupted, and it's not clear whether Russia will engage in protectionism of wheat. A shortage of more than 3% is possible. The tweet should have highlighted that uncertainty instead of presenting the 0.9% figure as a near fact. They smuggled in the word "estimate" somewhere but they obscured the uncertainty.

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

#175

Post by ncmncm »

ElectricalUnion wrote: post #69
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee and here I thought it was Putin who was dropping bombs. It's inconceivable he could just stop doing that? And go back to doing business peaceably? It's not "Win or Die" for Russia. Anything but. It's one man's ego, and even Russians recognize that. To assume only the US has any agency and only US actions make a difference, inevitably results in "The US is at fault for everything"

> It's not "Win or Die" for Russia. It took the US more that 8 years to retreat from Iraq, and you're asking a poor country to do such thing immediatly? The genie is out of the bottle, I don't think the west will suddenly drop all sanctions, pretend nothing happened, and resume business even if such never-seen-in-history retreat happens.

The sooner they leave the less it costs.

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

#176

Post by ncmncm »

thepasswordis wrote: post #99
saiya-jin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get people like you - you are seriously contemplating what Putin's PR team announce on given day as some seriously meant opinion that's worth anything. When its exactly opposite, just empty words, full of lies, deceit and lack of anything meaningful. Spending any amount of energy on them is waste of time, next day will next round of demands. You do realize that even if his demands would be met for some reason…

Do you think that Reuters is part of some conspiracy to print things from Putins PR team and pass them off as statements by Urkairne?

No conspiracy needed. Russia said something, Reuters reports, correctly, that they said it.

The mistake would be believing it because of that. Just such a mistake put Trump in office.

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

#177

Post by ineedasername »

pixl97 wrote: post #162
ineedasername wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anima…

I mean, that is just an advertisement to reduce meat production and focus on starch based calories for humans rather than supplying to inefficient meat production.

I was thinking much the same as I wrote it, but didn't want to overburden an already long comment. Here though, I'll say that large cattle consume about 30 calories for each single calorie their meat will provide. Poultry seem more like 10 to 1.

I'll own up to some level of hypocrisy on this as I am not a vegetarian, but I also won't complain much if further population growth makes meat consumption unsustainable when it means people starve. (I don't think we're there yet: world hunger right now seems to be more about other factors, economical and otherwise. I'm open to opposing viewpoints on it though)

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

#178

Post by ineedasername »

log1_aa wrote: post #141
KarlKemp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems that ships need to be specifically fitted out for something like grain transport as well. I'm sure there can be some reworking of things but it's bound to take time and resources and further boost cargo prices, and slow down on/offloading at ports and create additional bottlenecks.

I'm tentatively optimistic that this situation isn't going to mean mass famines, but there will be a significant monetary cost and likely some human cost as well.

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

#179

Post by 8note »

pempem wrote: post #159
stubish wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Another step up opportunity for China would definitely be problematic for the US

Problem for US hegemony. For the US, its likely a net benefit in that in buying cheap Chinese wheat, those consumers will be more able to afford expensive american ones

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

#180

Post by csee »

FrenchAmerican wrote: post #129
snowwrestler wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or maybe we need to stop relying on globalized markets for vital production. 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…

Wait, isn't there a contradiction here? You said countries need to protect their agriculture to remain sovereign, which is what the EU is doing. Then you blame the EU for protecting their agriculture. Which is it?
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