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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

#201
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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? I get your point. The issue is the hyper-productivism of the EU's agriculture. Public money, e.g. the citizens' money, is used to ensure revenues to farmers. I have no issue with that. But since that mone…

Clearly, the way ag subsidies are done is largely down to corruption, essentially politicians chasing votes from farmers/rural areas, as well as being bought by the ag lobby.

I wish to challenge two things you've said, though.

> The EU could decide to encourage organic farming rather than industrial agriculture based on Monsanto seeds and pesticides. The latter make possible high levels of production, but to a huge cost for biodiversity and even climate dereliction.

I hear alarm bells when I hear people criticizing "Monsanto seeds" and "pesticides". It reminds me of activists who are detached from practical trade-offs or who've bought into woo around GMOs. As if organic pesticides are much better or proven to be much safer? And if they are slightly safer, who is to say the current consideration of trade-offs is wrong? What's wrong with Monsanto seeds?

> Cereals are heavily subsidized and the same dependency is organized to keep Central & South American dependent for basic food.

I am almost certain this is false. It's attributing calculating, conspiratorial malice to forces that can be easily explained by the stock standard self-interested behavior of politicians and an industry lobbying group.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you argue that wheat demand is inelastic? Demand for food as a whole is inelastic, but wheat is just one of many, many food sources. Wheat is a cheap food. The second is stops becoming cheap people will shift to other cheap foods like rice or potatoes. I see a more modest increase in demand for alternatives that pulls all prices up, but it’s hard to see how prices skyrocket.

You are expecting everyone in a country that usually consumes ~5–10x more wheat than rice or potatoes to flip their whole food culture overnight? Do you have any historical examples of that happening? How did it work out? Where are they going to ship the tens of millions of extra tons of rice/potatoes from that won’t be just as big a logistical change?

The best example is the Irish potato famine. Happening in the mid 1800s. You’d hope today’s more robust diets and supply chains would improve things

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

#203
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That only reduces the cost from the point of view of Ukraine or the West, not from the point of view of the one being sanctioned.

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

#204

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?

I didn't mean to drop that comment and leave. I learned about the weaponization from Ft. Dietrich people. The group that worked on this is long since retired. They published three papers around 1950, as three parts, that are about 1. the largest study of spread of rust fungus outdoors 2. storage of rusts and 3. response of rust to weather. All useful for stopping rust on a crop. And I see someone contributed references that are more direct than my scientific ones. I was working on prevention of rust spread.

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source on that?

Kirby and Carus (2020) “Agroterrorism Perspectives”, in Mauroni and Norton, eds., Agroterrorism: National Defense Assessment, Strategies, and Capabilities . U.S. Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies. Page 9: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CSDS/books/Agrot... > During the Cold War, the United States devised Operation Steelyard, a plan to destroy 50 percent of the Soviet Union’s winter wheat u…

This is a great reference! There is also an entry in the congressional record on declassification of the data. And 3 scientific papers. If you know more, send me a note. I worked in the area of rust spread and have always wanted to learn more about this.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kirby and Carus (2020) “Agroterrorism Perspectives”, in Mauroni and Norton, eds., Agroterrorism: National Defense Assessment, Strategies, and Capabilities . U.S. Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies. Page 9: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CSDS/books/Agrot... > During the Cold War, the United States devised Operation Steelyard, a plan to destroy 50 percent of the Soviet Union’s winter wheat u…

This is a great reference! There is also an entry in the congressional record on declassification of the data. And 3 scientific papers. If you know more, send me a note. I worked in the area of rust spread and have always wanted to learn more about this.

I only know what I found in 10 minutes of web searches, sorry.

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

#207
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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. It works, if the good in question is not needed to satisfy a basic human need. It also works, when the good in question can be produced so that everyone has eno…

Thank you - that's actually a really valuable distinction/framing.

(I'm not sure I 100% agree, but it poses a whole nest of interesting question when applied to various economic situations.)

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