[HN Gopher] A world grain shortage puts tens of millions at risk
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A world grain shortage puts tens of millions at risk
Author : Michelangelo11
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-05-21 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| alliao wrote:
| let's say if the shortfall makes up 30% of supply.. surely those
| 70% other farmers would just need to raise by 140% or so to FULLY
| make up the difference? everyone pitch in a little, shouldn't be
| THAT big of a deal surely....
| sremani wrote:
| that would be easy if there was an AWS for Food!
|
| Here is the reality, not only the grains but the inputs like
| fertilizers etc are sky-rocketing. Every body wants to piss of
| Fossil Fuels with out even understanding how foundational they
| are to Modern Civilization (I welcome the downvotes but I will
| not stop advocating).
|
| Say, with me, N P K - Nitrogen Phosphorous Pottasium. Belarus
| is a major Potash supplier, Natural gas is important for
| Fertilizer production etc. These inputs are now expensive.
|
| But the policy genius, LOVE Price Controls, so what prices do
| these guys love controlling, they target staples .. grains,
| rice etc.
|
| Now if you are farmer, who has to invest more money given the
| increased cost of fertilizers etc. and the government will come
| and take away the grain below market rate -- are you going to
| play the game? That is the game in much of the developing
| world.. and to some extend even developed world.
|
| So your AWS style solution of spinning another EC2 instance for
| Food does not work in the real world.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| I upvote you.
|
| Everyone shits on fossil fuels with no idea how crucial they
| are. No fossil fuels. No modern society. Turn it off and
| death will follow.
| finiteseries wrote:
| I tried copy and pasting certain paragraphs from the article
| here, (weather/price of inputs/farmer incentives/how wheat is
| purchased by nations/monetary policies/etc) but there are so
| many compounding _global_ issues here one might just consider
| rereading the article instead.
|
| It is quite a big deal.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Can't tell if this is a joke or not. One would think that if a
| farmer could raise output (and thus revenue) by 140% on short
| demand, they would have already done so years ago?
| juanani wrote:
| ggm wrote:
| I would be interested in an analysis at scale of artifacts,
| components, foodstuffs, industrial inputs, which have similar
| impact to the loss of this source of wheat, against a worldwide
| wheat market.
|
| If (eg) Argentina Bolivia and Chile were unable to supply
| Lithium, how long would it take the world to ramp up to using
| Australian sources, and what would it do to the supply chain?
|
| Or, if the soybean crop failed in one economy, would worldwide
| pig production suffer?
| planetsprite wrote:
| The agricultural revolution and its consequences have been a
| disaster for the human race.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| Our brains were certainly larger on an individual level, but
| those individuals could never surpass a few tens of thousands,
| spread globally, the farther the better!
| avgcorrection wrote:
| We built human civilization so that we could Show HN the app
| that we built. Take that, hunter-gatherers.
| [deleted]
| nine_k wrote:
| Do you mean that remaining primitive hunters-gatherers, as now
| observed in certain places near Amazon river, would be more of
| a success?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Yes. Thousands of years of class societies haven't been
| great.
|
| But the revolution happened out of sheer necessity, not out
| of choice. Hunter-gatherer societies aren't sustainable past
| a certain threshold of population density.
| ihm wrote:
| I don't support trying to turn back the clock, but modern day
| hunter gatherers should not be thought of as a reliable
| picture of past hunter-gatherers.
|
| For one, they mostly inhabit some of the lowest quality land
| since the best land has been taken by industrial society.
| Past hunter-gatherers would have had their pick of land.
| civilized wrote:
| The grass is always greener
| planetsprite wrote:
| Thanks to chemical pesticides and industrial fertilizers.
| planetsprite wrote:
| yes according to modern media sentiment. Never once have I
| watched a movie that argued for the antithesis of the
| "Avatar" respect nature mantra. I mean even without the
| warmongering factories are never portrayed in a positive
| light unless they're Willy Wonka's.
| civilized wrote:
| I wouldn't figure what society you'd be happy in based on
| media depictions. They're selling you whatever you'll buy.
| They sold the Jetsons back in the day.
| panzagl wrote:
| I think you need to rewatch/reread Willie Wonka...
| hemreldop wrote:
| gillytech wrote:
| Non paywalled version: https://archive.ph/u7s5R
| skybrian wrote:
| It would be interesting to see some graphs of how international
| trade in grain compares to total production (including internal
| consumption).
| trasz wrote:
| The war wouldn't be such a problem if Ukraine received proper
| anti-ship missiles.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Why is that?
| fragmede wrote:
| The _theory_ is that the Ukranians would use those missiles
| to clear the Black Sea blockade and then they would be able
| to resume shipping grain, grain-precursors, and other goods
| as they did before the war. There 's more to the situation
| than that, so it's impossible to say if that would be enough,
| unfortunately, but that's the theory.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > The war wouldn't be such a problem if Ukraine received proper
| anti-ship missiles.
|
| That's very difficult to say, actually; the Moskova was sunk
| with them after all, but the bigger issue is the abhorrent and
| indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations by the
| Russians. Fields with farmers and homes and hospitals with
| civilians are not of military importance. And yet, Russia keeps
| shooting them.
|
| The truth is Putin's Kremlin is to blame for this wide-spread
| shortage and upcoming famine in many regions of the World, the
| West should just take the funds they seized as seed money to
| grow wheat in Africa this season even if it's a loss to offset
| this massive lost in cultivation in Ukraine.
|
| For what it's worth, planting is still taking place [0], it's
| just being disrupted and will not be as large of a grow as it
| was prior to the invasion, so the yields will be reduced. I
| have it on good authority that in Lviv Oblast, specifically in
| Trasncarpathia things are still going into the ground as
| planned since Spring.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-nOuy5C60Q
| ericd wrote:
| I've read that the disruption in fertilizer feedstock
| (especially methane) is going to reduce yields in other parts
| of the world, as well.
| sega_sai wrote:
| The problem is that Russia has a sea blockade not allowing
| Ukrainian ships with grain to leave ports. That's where the
| missiles could help. (in the same time Russia sells stolen
| from Ukraine grain itself).
| AnonCoward4 wrote:
| > That's very difficult to say, actually; the Moskova was
| sunk with them after all, but the bigger issue is the
| abhorrent and indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations
| by the Russians. Fields with farmers and homes and hospitals
| with civilians are not of military importance. And yet,
| Russia keeps shooting them.
|
| According to western media.
|
| > The truth is Putin's Kremlin is to blame for this wide-
| spread shortage
|
| Yeah that would be easy, however it's not as cut and dry (it
| rarely is). You could as easily blame Zelenskyy for killing
| thousands of east Ukrainians prior. And then their is the
| coup d'etat in 2014 as well and the constant provocations of
| the NATO in general. So I am not so sure that Putin's Kremlin
| alone is to blame.
| hkpack wrote:
| > According to western media.
|
| Wow, that's a new level of denial. Take a look, this
| happened yesterday [0].
|
| This is a "culture hall", pretty far away from the front
| lines, where kids used to learn to play music. More than
| ten injured including children.
|
| [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnU_3ljHMQ
| oneoff786 wrote:
| It's a barely noteworthy Russian propaganda line tbh.
| trasz wrote:
| That's true of course, but from my understanding the main
| problem at the moment is exporting the grain, not production
| of said grain.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| No, growing is definitely going to be an issue, as is
| storing it because Russia has been targeting Grain silos,
| too.
|
| The transportation aspect is a critical issue, too, but one
| would like to think that as Russia is being pushed back to
| the border that the center and West will be able to
| transport to Poland/Romania to enter EU markets by the time
| harvest occurs in the Fall.
|
| The main issue is that Russia keeps attacking civilian
| targets as well as Military ones, the recent bombing in
| Lviv also struck and damaged the trains [0].
|
| Again, the sanctions on Russian oil need to be swift and
| deceive if this is going to stop anytime soon, they are
| losing nearly $1 billion per day of the illegal war in
| Ukraine. This only possible because of the few EU nations
| holding out on a total withdraw from Russian energy. I get
| the implications are dire, but this is the reality of
| countries like Germany and Italy building their entire
| economies around Russian energy, but this is what will
| shift the West to renewables more than anything else in my
| lifetime. So, short term pain but long term thinking needs
| to be put into place.
|
| Summer is here, and it's already clear to me that it's no
| different than what we've had since COVID started the
| numbers look remarkably the same and the recession is
| showing.
|
| I just hope that we make progress in this area and we can
| justify the last 3 years by making a massive leap towards
| renewable energy being at the core of energy useage.
|
| 0: https://archive.ph/hpTqF
| jltsiren wrote:
| Transportation is the bigger issue.
|
| Ukrainian grain exports used to be tens of millions of
| tonnes per year. That's something like a million
| semitrucks or a million railway cars. You can't build
| that kind of capacity in a few months, especially not in
| the middle of an all-out war.
|
| As long as Russia can operate submarines in the Black
| Sea, it can blockade Ukrainian ports. No foreign cargo
| ship will approach the ports, and no foreign insurer will
| insure such ships.
|
| Ukraine also depended on Russian energy. If Europe wants
| to phase out Russian energy imports, it can't supply
| enough fuel to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine has better
| uses for the fuel it can get than exporting low-value
| bulk goods. Like keeping its military operational, which
| also needs the trucks that could export grain.
|
| Ukraine uses the Soviet 1520 mm rail gauge, while its
| western neighbors use the 1435 mm gauge. That creates a
| huge bottleneck for rail transport. Not to mention that
| Russia has been targeting Ukrainian railway
| infrastructure.
|
| There are not that many major roads from Ukraine to the
| west, and some of them are unusable. The border between
| Moldova and Ukraine is largely controlled by Russian-
| backed separatists, while Russia has been bombing the
| bridges on the only road south of Moldova repeatedly.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Russia has submarines in the black sea.
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