[americandream]

I can't even figure out what the various positions are of people on the here any more.

I'm not sure there are any anymore. It's just people taking personal pot-shots at other posters.

no

I am consistent. We have to endure capitalism to advance. It is a necessary evil. There are no guarantees but the past is gone. For good. We understand its mechanics, we harness its potential, we render it internalised in a loop and we move as a conscious species to maximise our potential.

But wet dreams about kudzu apes chewing on neighbouring apes for a fast snack are the wet dreams of the uninformed. We will either succeed in the evolutionary experiment or become redundant.

[dohboi]

Sooo, so far dolanbaker thinks that if the supply of a commodity like grains goes down, the price will go up. Fair enough, though fairly ECON 101.

And americandream predicts that...the past is gone.

So if crashing supply leads to vast increases in price, db will be proved wrong.

If suddenly we start to exactly relive the past, then ad will be proved wrong.

I'm not betting against either of them!!

Anyone care to make even slightly less predictable predictions?

[americandream]

Dohboi. we can as much relive the pastoral past of yesteryear, if there was ever one, as could our wheeled ancestors, the cave. This set of social relations has a specific trajectory, it carries fixed risks that we cannot walk away from. We move in time through evolutionary points of no return. As Marx noted those centuries ago:

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.

[ennui2]

What explains a simultaneous grain-production, grain stock, and grain-price decline

More cognitive dissonance on your part, of course. How many times have peakers explained the relationship between oil prices and food prices? The whole ratio of FF used to produce a given calorie of food schtick? Remember? This was part of the logic behind connecting the dots between oil and, let's say, the Arab spring, right? So wouldn't it be fair to say that the price of food swings in large part with the price of oil? Is that really so mysterious?

So oil glut = food glut.

[marmico]

The FAO estimated stock to utilization ratio in 2016 is 24.9%, down from 25.2% in 2015. Cast back to 2004, when pstarr initiated the first of his 22,000 posts on this blog and the actual ratio was lower. Hmmm...12 years later the inventory to consumption ratio of cereals is higher.

[vtsnowedin]

Yes the article made no mention of falling food production. But I did. I looked it up.

Dolan, do we live in a different universe? Or do you not read what was written? Prices are down, production is down, oil is down but there are more people to feed.

This doesn't make sense unless you are willing to grasp what a general contraction really is. It is the opposite of an inflation. Prices go down, money and credit disappear and people go hungry.

Prices are down, production is down, but stocks are high.
It appears to me that producers have simply decided to produce less to avoid a price collapse due to lack of demand.

I would not consider stocks as high given that they represent just a three month supply at present usage rates. Different farmers have different production costs. As prices fall some of them have the price they can receive fall below their production costs.Those farmers drop out or switch to other crops and that is where the reduction in planting and production comes from.
The increase in world population by itself does not increase demand because much of the 85 million a year increase is in the poorest countries in the world and they have no money to buy more food. Many will starve to death without ever making a ripple on world markets.

[marmico]

That 24.9%> 25.2% is really statistical noise. Yep.

[ennui2]

I have a good answer, but you and the rest of the cornies will just sneer.

If you've got something to add to the discussion, add it, fer chrissakes. Just stop the pointless teasing and snark-fest.

[Tanada]

Here is my theory, grain being converted to Ethanol has fallen substantially in the last 18 months so that has created a surplus of grain driving prices down in the USA and discouraging farmers from planting as much corn as they planted in 2010-2014.

[marmico]

Oh, as a kindergartner you should learn your directions. That "24.9%> 25.2%" is incorrect. It's 24.9% < 25.2%. Typos happen. Must be plenty of typos in your curriculum vitae after 22,000 posts.

Why don't you wait until the original estimates become more precise estimates and then become empirical data? Otherwise, it's all noise, no signal.

Idjits that first came onboard in the 2002-2012 commodity boom have no currency in the 2016 commodity bust.

[dolanbaker]

Here is my theory, grain being converted to Ethanol has fallen substantially in the last 18 months so that has created a surplus of grain driving prices down in the USA and discouraging farmers from planting as much corn as they planted in 2010-2014.

That makes sense, there can't be much profit in ethanol these days.

[marmico]

Well if only you knew about the ethanol blending wall in the U.S.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... f-gasoline

Corn ain't FAO global cereal.

Oh, back on topic, the Great Contraction hasn't begun.

[dohboi]

Why don't you think it has? What would you accept as evidence that it has?

[onlooker]

Great article on how the West specifically the elites and elite banks, corporations etc. are after totally looted 3rd World countries now turned on itself to loot itself. That is what happens when Capitalism knows know bounds and is not reigned in. Guess we are in the West are now getting a taste of our own medicine. Oh and tell me how this NOT another sign of the Great Contraction? It is.
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content ... tself-5912