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#Post#: 3507--------------------------------------------------
Food Insecurity
By: K-Dog Date: June 4, 2022, 4:47 pm
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Source: Mother Jones
[center][img
width=350]
HTML https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.McGz-11Sq2HMlsUBYhPkQwHaDt%26pid%3DApi&f=1[/img][/center]
Back in February, Russia invaded Ukraine, turning Europe’s main
wheat-growing region—a key source of grain and cooking oil for
the Middle East and Africa—into a war zone. Global food prices
had already been rising steadily for a year, pushed up by supply
chain snarls brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The war
sent them soaring anew, to the highest levels since 1961, when
the United Nations began tracking. On top of this, global
public-health authorities warn that weather extremes related to
climate change are wilting crops and shrinking harvests in
alarming ways—setting the stage for what could be the worst
hunger crisis in generations.
At a meeting of the United Nations on May 18, Secretary-General
António Guterres reported that the number of “severely food
insecure people” had doubled in just two years, from 135 million
before the pandemic to 276 million today, “with more than half a
million experiencing famine conditions—an increase of more than
500 per cent since 2016.” At the same meeting, David Beasley,
executive director of the World Food Program, added that without
an immediate reduction in the price of food and other
necessities like energy, which is also soaring, the number of
people experiencing famine could soon balloon to 49 million in
43 countries, a scale of misery not seen since China’s Great
Leap Forward Famine of 1949-’51.
The case of India, the world’s second-biggest producer of wheat,
exemplifies how climate contributes to this mess. Typically, the
great bulk of India’s harvest feeds domestic demand, leaving
little left over for exports. But five consecutive bumper crops
emboldened Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare in April that
his country’s wheat farmers could help offset the Black Sea
shortfall, because “we already have enough food for our people.”
In early May, he reiterated his vow, adding that “India’s
farmers are coming forward to feed the world.” The announcements
briefly helped calm markets and stabilize prices.
But even as Modi was talking up the nation’s wheat output, a
historic heatwave had descended upon the subcontinent’s
breadbasket region. “March’s temperatures were consistently 3–8
ºC above average, reaching highs of 44 ºC [111 ºF]— the highest
they’ve been since records began 122 years ago,” Nature reports.
The unrelenting heat parched crops and forced the government to
slash its harvest forecast. Modi had to backtrack. Rather than
“feed the world” with bounty, India would ban exports, the
right-wing PM announced on May 16. In response, global wheat
prices spiked yet again.
Meanwhile, in the United States—a key hub of production in the
global food system of such staple commodities as wheat, rice,
and corn—droughts supercharged by climate change are also
wreaking havoc on harvests, threatening to add yet more fuel to
the fire.
Much of the Great Plains, the nation’s most important wheat
growing region, stretching from Nebraska to the Texas Panhandle,
is currently beset by weather extremes. In the southern part,
farmers plant wheat in the winter and harvest it early in the
the summer. This year, a drought with conditions ranging from
“severe” to “exceptional” has settled in, according to the US
Drought Monitor. In Oklahoma, the combination of high heat and
bone-dry soil has “devastated” the winter wheat crop, the
Oklahoma State University Extension reported on May 23, and
overall output will be half of last year. In the Texas
Panhandle’s farm fields, an astonishing 79 percent of the winter
wheat crop is in “poor” or “very poor” condition ahead of
harvest, the US Department of Agriculture’s latest assessment,
released May 23, finds. It’s not hard to see why: Virtually 100
percent of the region’s farmland acres adequate soil moisture,
the report states. The dismal conditions will drag down the
overall US winter wheat output by 8 percent this year, the USDA
projects—right when the world needs more grain to hit the market
In the northern plains, where farmers plant wheat in the spring
and harvest it in the late summer, output won’t likely offset
the south’s shortfall. There, the opposite problem has
descended: Spring storms have made fields too wet plant.
(Climate change has already dramatically increased spring
precipitation in the region, and will continue doing so going
forward, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a
multi-agency government report released in 2017). As a result of
soggy fields, “US farmers have only seeded 49 percent of their
intended spring wheat acres as of May 22, matching 2014 for the
slowest pace since 1996, ” Reuters reported on Tuesday. The
major buyers of US wheat include the Philippines, Mexico,
Nigeria, and Yemen.
Meanwhile, in California’s Central Valley, a third consecutive
year of epic drought has settled in. While the region is most
famous for luxury crops (almonds, pistachio, walnuts, wine
grapes) that don’t contribute much to the low-income countries
now mired in hunger crises, it’s northern half, known as the
Sacramento Valley, is a major producer of short-grain rice,
about 44 percent of which is typically exported. This year,
farmers in the region will receive a fraction of the irrigation
water they usually get through canals designed to capture
snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
As a result, farmers there are fallowing huge swaths of land. In
a normal year, they devote about 500,000 acres to rice. Last
year, already squeezed by dry conditions, land planted to rice
dropped to 407,000 acres; and this year, the USDA projects
acreage at 340,000 acres—about 32 percent below normal and the
lowest level in 39 years. Mainly because of the California
shortfall, the agency expects overall US rice exports in 2022 to
fall 4 percent compared to last year’s level.
In short, California’s latest drought is zapping rice that could
have gone to ease a mounting global food crunch. Unlike wheat,
which is directly affected by the war, rice isn’t trading at
all-time highs on global markets. But its price has surged
lately, and it is trading at its highest level in a decade.
“Rice is the primary staple for more than half the world’s
population, with Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South America the
largest consuming regions,” the USDA states. In 2008,
simultaneous spikes in wheat and rice prices triggered food
riots “from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt,” CNN reported at the
time.
The modern global food system may be reaching its limits.
Bolstered by hybrid seeds, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides,
and ever-huger diesel-powered machines, farms have gotten
dramatically more productive. Between 1960 and 2010, worldwide
agricultural output more than tripled, far outstripping
population growth. But that ramp-up has led to geographic and
economic concentration: food production consolidated into a few
big exporting countries like the United States, Brazil and
Russia, and traded by a handful of globe-spanning firms known as
the ABCDs—Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill, and
Louis Dreyfus—which are currently raking in “tremendous profits”
from high prices, reports the financial-analysis firm S&P
Global.
Such a system may be efficient at maximizing crop yields (and
profits for the ABCDs) under ideal weather conditions, but it’s
also vulnerable to shocks from an ever-warmer climate and from
wars like the one raging in Ukraine. In its most recent report,
the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
found that warmer temperatures have already lowered yields of
the globe’s big three staple crops—corn, wheat, and rice—by 5.3
percent since 1961, and that these crops’ yields will fall an
additional 10-25 percent for each degree Celsius of future
warming. Climate and geopolitical insults to the global food
system have a way of intersecting and feeding into each other in
hellish ways. As the UN’s Guterres recently put it, “If we do
not feed people, we feed conflict.” And of course, conflict
makes feeding people all the more difficult.
For decades, agencies like the International Monetary Fund have
urged low-income countries to push small-scale farmers out of
agriculture and into cities, while relying on global markets for
food staples. The IPCC report suggests a different way forward:
diversify the global food system by supporting those same
farmers to grow food for local consumption, using
“agroecological” methods that don’t rely heavily on pricey
inputs like synthetic fertilizer (which has also skyrocketed in
price since the war began). Think growing multiple crops in
rotation; and combining crops with livestock and trees. As the
threat of famine gains momentum and the climate warms, those
ideas resonate.
Tom Philpott is the food and ag correspondent for Mother Jones.
He can be reached at tphilpott@motherjones.com, or on Twitter at
@tomphilpott.
#Post#: 3508--------------------------------------------------
Re: Food Insecurity
By: Phil Potts Date: June 5, 2022, 1:26 am
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Only time will tell what the truth is on this:
HTML https://www.rt.com/russia/556586-putin-interview-food-crisis/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=push_notifications
#Post#: 3521--------------------------------------------------
Re: Food Insecurity
By: Digwe Must Date: June 7, 2022, 4:36 pm
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I am way behind in comments and contributions. There has been
some good stuff lately.
Not sure if this should be in this thread or the other food
thread. You guys decide.
HTML https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/prog2422.pdf
This is the current USDA estimate of major crops. Some
interesting information that is actually positive for mitigating
the food crisis.
As far as I am able to discern, there is not much major trouble
in the US crop forecast. Wheat in the Northwest is hurting, the
upper Midwest is a little late getting corn and soybeans in the
ground. A few other outliers will pinch some supply - but
others seem to be above average. The rice crop looks good but
much of that will be exported.
Of course, the weather can turn on a dime and play hell with
this crop estimate. Also, the USDA is notoriously optimistic.
But they can't stray too far from actual conditions because the
commodity markets will call bullshit - and have.
I assume that the Canadian forecast can't be all that different.
The Russian wheat crop is supposed to be near - or at- record
levels.
Price is another matter completely. We are all aware of the
fertilizer situation. With the JB administration mandating more
ethanol in fuel, corn prices are guaranteed to rise more. Other
grains will follow.
Does Ukrainian grain make it to market or not? Millions of
human lives ride on the answer to that question.
Now, must go plant and dig.
Fodere Debemus
#Post#: 3522--------------------------------------------------
Re: Food Insecurity
By: K-Dog Date: June 7, 2022, 5:06 pm
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[quote author=Digwe Must link=topic=112.msg3521#msg3521
date=1654637774]
I am way behind in comments and contributions. There has been
some good stuff lately.
Not sure if this should be in this thread or the other food
thread. You guys decide.
HTML https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/prog2422.pdf
This is the current USDA estimate of major crops. Some
interesting information that is actually positive for mitigating
the food crisis.
As far as I am able to discern, there is not much major trouble
in the US crop forecast. Wheat in the Northwest is hurting, the
upper Midwest is a little late getting corn and soybeans in the
ground. A few other outliers will pinch some supply - but
others seem to be above average. The rice crop looks good but
much of that will be exported.
Of course, the weather can turn on a dime and play hell with
this crop estimate. Also, the USDA is notoriously optimistic.
But they can't stray too far from actual conditions because the
commodity markets will call bullshit - and have.
I assume that the Canadian forecast can't be all that different.
The Russian wheat crop is supposed to be near - or at- record
levels.
Price is another matter completely. We are all aware of the
fertilizer situation. With the JB administration mandating more
ethanol in fuel, corn prices are guaranteed to rise more. Other
grains will follow.
Does Ukrainian grain make it to market or not? Millions of
human lives ride on the answer to that question.
Now, must go plant and dig.
Fodere Debemus
[/quote]
I am off to work and will read the .pdf later. This week I have
info on Ukrainian grain.
HTML https://chasingthesquirrel.com/
But since there is a war on, truth is a casualty so who knows
how many ships are getting out.
#Post#: 3523--------------------------------------------------
Re: Food Insecurity: Lettuce shortage forces KFC to put cabbage
in burgers; some Subway stores run out
By: John of Wallan Date: June 7, 2022, 9:09 pm
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Lettuce shortage forces KFC to put cabbage in burgers; some
Subway stores run out
Sounds like a real first world problem....
Ahh. JIT food supplies.
JOW
Link:
HTML https://www.theage.com.au/business/markets/lettuce-shortage-forces-kfc-to-put-cabbage-in-their-burgers-20220607-p5arr8.html
Text:
Lettuce shortage forces KFC to put cabbage in burgers; some
Subway stores run out
Nick Bonyhady
By Nick Bonyhady
Updated June 7, 2022 — 4.12pmfirst published at 1.57pm
Australia is facing a lettuce shortage that has led to soaring
prices and spurred global fast food giant KFC to put cabbage in
its burgers, while some Subway outlets are making do without the
staple vegetable.
KFC notified customers that it will use a blend of lettuce and
cabbage throughout its restaurants, citing supply chain
disruptions after heavy flooding across the east coast wiped out
much of the lettuce crop earlier in the year.
KFC is running out of lettuce.
KFC is running out of lettuce.
Growers in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley typically supply much of
Australia’s lettuce crop during winter when the weather in
southern farming regions is too cold. However, they have been
hit with extreme rain over the last 12 months, wiping out crops
that typically take at least 10 weeks to grow.
Bill Bulmer, a Victorian grower and chair of industry body
AusVeg, said he had recently toured farms in Queensland.
“There was nothing out there in the fields,” Bulmer said.
Intermittent rains have made it harder to replant fresh crops as
well, he said. That could result in a “yo-yo” effect where
supply comes and goes over coming months.
Consumers have also been hit with exorbitant prices for the
humble ingredient in the grocery aisles. Shoppers are venting on
social media about paying around $12 for a head of iceberg
lettuce at independent stores, as well as steeper prices for
other produce, with costs upward of $25 for a watermelon.
Woolworths and Coles are still both advertising $5.50 per head
of iceberg lettuce, but it is unavailable in most Woolworths
stores around inner Sydney and Melbourne, according to its
website. A Coles spokesman would not comment specifically on
lettuce supplies but said the company was supporting its growers
in flood-affected areas.
From lettuce to poultry, 2022 has seen a glut of food supply
hiccups. KFC had to cut menu items in January amid shortages of
chicken. Subway’s spokesman Rhys Reynolds confirmed that the
sandwich chain was experiencing a fresh lettuce shortage. “We
expect this to be a short-term inconvenience for our guests,”
Reynolds said.
A Subway store informs patrons that it has no lettuce.
A Subway store informs patrons that it has no lettuce.
In its last update on fresh produce sent on May 22, Woolworths
also flagged reduced supply and quantity of several varieties of
tomatoes as well as zucchini, broccoli, beans and broccolini
among other types of produce.
“We’re still seeing challenges with lettuce and berry supply so
while the new crops have been planted, it will take a few weeks
for stocks to return to more stable levels,” said Paul Turner,
Woolworths’ general manager of fruit and vegetables.
While elevated prices, which have seen some growers receive $80
to $100 per scarce box of lettuce rather than a typical $14 to
$16, are largely the result of climate events, Australia is
still grappling with pandemic-related supply chain disruptions
and persistent labour shortages, as well as the spikes in
fertiliser and fuel prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine.
“In normal times fruit and vegetable prices tend to recover
relatively quickly and return to normal as production in other
areas becomes available to fill supply gaps,” the Australian
Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences
(ABARES) said in its quarterly outlook on Tuesday. “However, in
2022–23 almost all aspects of the supply chain are facing
inflationary pressures.”
RELATED ARTICLE
Experts predict grocery prices will keep rising for the rest of
the year.
Shopping
‘Don’t be shocked’: Grocery prices to jump higher, experts warn
That aligns with global trends, with a United Nations’ gauge of
global food prices at near record-highs.
A McDonald’s spokeswoman said its outlets were still serving the
“full menu”. A representative of KFC has been contacted for
comment.
#Post#: 3526--------------------------------------------------
The elephant in the room is destroying family farms, rural commu
nities and our democracy
By: RE Date: June 8, 2022, 3:19 am
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No newz to the Permies here.
HTML https://missouriindependent.com/2022/06/07/the-elephant-in-the-room-is-destroying-family-farms-rural-communities-and-our-democracy-opinion/
The elephant in the room is destroying family farms, rural
communities and our democracy
RE
#Post#: 3529--------------------------------------------------
Re: Food Insecurity
By: Phil Potts Date: June 8, 2022, 5:05 am
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Last year was a record 35m tons, but I can't see anywhere what
this year is expected to produce
HTML https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Commodities/Australia-s-record-wheat-harvest-is-no-fix-for-the-global-food-crisis
#Post#: 3530--------------------------------------------------
Re: Food Insecurity
By: Digwe Must Date: June 8, 2022, 11:05 am
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[quote author=RE link=topic=112.msg3526#msg3526 date=1654676376]
No newz to the Permies here.
HTML https://missouriindependent.com/2022/06/07/the-elephant-in-the-room-is-destroying-family-farms-rural-communities-and-our-democracy-opinion/
The elephant in the room is destroying family farms, rural
communities and our democracy
RE
[/quote]
Thanks for posting this. Absolutely right on. I'm going to
throw a few quotes at you from B Mollison, one of the Aussie
co-creators of Permaculture.
[b]“The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are
designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for
this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own
food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political
control over them. We should cease to look to power structures,
hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways
to help ourselves.”
-- Bill Mollison
“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to
production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If
only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the
futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on
the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets,
not food and shelter.”
-- Bill Mollison
“Permaculture offers a radical approach to food production and
urban renewal, water, energy and pollution. It integrates
ecology, landscape, organic gardening, architecture and
agro-forestry in creating a rich and sustainable way of living.
It uses appropriate technology giving high yields for low energy
inputs, achieving a resource of great diversity and stability.
The design principles are equally applicable to both urban and
rural dwellers”
-- Bill Mollison
“The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own
existence and that of our children.”
-- Bill Mollison
[“Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the
solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”
-- Bill Mollison/b]
#Post#: 3532--------------------------------------------------
Low Carbon Food Insecurity
By: K-Dog Date: June 8, 2022, 2:16 pm
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“The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are
designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for
this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own
food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political
control over them. We should cease to look to power structures,
hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways
to help ourselves.”
-- Bill Mollison
If wishes were horses fools would ride. We have a CONSUMER
CULTURE driven by global corporations who DO NOT think local.
Everybody is a SPECTATOR WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY. Helpless and
hopeless, all we have are bread and games. Desire to actually
live has died. All people are doing is living through other
people.
[center]
[img
width=200]
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[center]Does Johnny do permaculture?[/center]
#Post#: 3533--------------------------------------------------
Re: Food Insecurity
By: Digwe Must Date: June 8, 2022, 2:49 pm
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"Everybody is a SPECTATOR WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY." - KDog
Not everybody. I'm old and hurt but will be working on a better
way until the day I die. By the way, Mollison was not a fool.
He did very important work in many countries improving the
quality of life for the many people he worked with. If he was a
fool for that, we need more fools.
I will admit it would be much easier to be terminally cynical.
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I we've been through that and this is not our fate.
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late"
-Bobby Dylan
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