[careinke]

Rice Futures went through the roof today. Maybe it's the new Famine Indicator. Add the fact that planting season is upon us and it is very hard to plant on a battle field. Things are not looking so good for Europe.

[Tuike]

Today's newspaper wrote that Europe might not face famine, but higher prices for food. But before the war many low income people were faced with a choice, they can afford either food or medicine, but not both. The newspaper wrote that 3rd world countries will surely face mass starvation. There are people panicking where to find someone who sells wheat. War and famine go hand in hand.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Today's newspaper wrote that Europe might not face famine, but higher prices for food. But before the war many low income people were faced with a choice, they can afford either food or medicine, but not both.

This has often been the case for many low income people for quite a few decades now, at least in the US.

And despite all the claims by BOTH sides that they will "fix" drug prices with more government involvement or less, the pace of drug price rises in the US has only been accelerating as a trend over the past decade.

I believe that the folks in the beltway get paid a LOT by the various PAC's etc. supporting the drug industry, and that's the bottom line re how rapidly that issue will actually be dealt with in a meaningful way.

For Europe I can't say, except at least much of Western Europe actually has government negotiate with drug makers for volume discounts, etc, so at least they're making an effort.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Rice Futures went through the roof today. Maybe it's the new Famine Indicator. Add the fact that planting season is upon us and it is very hard to plant on a battle field. Things are not looking so good for Europe.

When I search for rice futures (not what I normally watch), I find "rough rice". I see that up .86% today.

Near the top of the range for the month, but certainly nothing dramatic.

Am I looking at the "wrong" rice, or are you using a LOT of hyperbole with "through the roof"?

As a sanity check on the message, when I look today and weekly, the overall tone of the agricultural markets is that they're down. Not exactly consistent with mass fear of lots of starvation, especially given there's a big war on with implications for crops, shipping, production, etc.

Just glancing around, coal is what stunned me. Up about 50% in the past month and a whopping 300% in the past year, SO MUCH for the green idea of coal usage going away real soon now, apparently.

If overall futures tell the tale re what to worry about, then despite the crude oil pullback this week, it's energy that the world is wound up about generally, looking at the past month's and year's gains. (I'm far from convinced chasing such trends pans out well over time, but re reflecting short term fear / worries, sure).

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodities

[Newfie]

Thanks for the link.

[jedrider]

Plains drought to curb U.S. wheat harvest
https://news.yahoo.com/plains-drought-curb-u-wheat-231335341.html

China warns of 'worst in history' winter wheat crop
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Agricu ... wheat-crop

Ukrainian Wheat, Russian Invasion, 15 Nuclear Reactors

I mean, what can go wrong here?

[Tanada]

Rice Futures went through the roof today. Maybe it's the new Famine Indicator. Add the fact that planting season is upon us and it is very hard to plant on a battle field. Things are not looking so good for Europe.

When I search for rice futures (not what I normally watch), I find "rough rice". I see that up .86% today.

Near the top of the range for the month, but certainly nothing dramatic.

Am I looking at the "wrong" rice, or are you using a LOT of hyperbole with "through the roof"?

As a sanity check on the message, when I look today and weekly, the overall tone of the agricultural markets is that they're down. Not exactly consistent with mass fear of lots of starvation, especially given there's a big war on with implications for crops, shipping, production, etc.

Just glancing around, coal is what stunned me. Up about 50% in the past month and a whopping 300% in the past year, SO MUCH for the green idea of coal usage going away real soon now, apparently.

If overall futures tell the tale re what to worry about, then despite the crude oil pullback this week, it's energy that the world is wound up about generally, looking at the past month's and year's gains. (I'm far from convinced chasing such trends pans out well over time, but re reflecting short term fear / worries, sure).

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodities

My understanding is "Rough Rice" is still coated in a thick covering of bran and only useful for animal feed or as seed for the next crop. "Brown Rice" has been partially stripped but still has a thin brown bran coating on it and is recommended by most nutritionists as a slower digesting form. "White or Polished Rice" has had all the bran along with the rice germ stripped off and is over 90% starch. It is good for filler in sparse meals and has plenty of calories but all the vitamins and fiber are pretty much long gone. It cooks much faster and is better for things like making Saki because the yeast can break down some of the starches into Maltose without great difficulty.

[theluckycountry]

[quote="Tuike] before the war many low income people were faced with a choice, they can afford either food or medicine, but not both.[/quote]

I know a couple of decades ago in England the choice was Eat, or stay warm in winter. They had 50,000 excess deaths just from the cold in Winter, I can only imagine how bad it is there now.

Oil is the key to it all of course, here our petrol prices have literally gone through the roof, up from $1.60 a liter to $2.30 in the space of a few months. And it's not the $US exchange rate either, that's been steady for years. Except for an odd spike in March 2020.

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from ... UD&view=5Y

It's just as ken deffeys said, with the peaking of oil we will see price instability and it has nothing to do with wars or putins, they are just convenient excuses to hike the price and cover ongoing costs.

[AdamB]

It's just as ken deffeys said, with the peaking of oil we will see price instability and it has nothing to do with wars or putins, they are just convenient excuses to hike the price and cover ongoing costs.

Yeah, but he said that about his peak oil day of Thanksgiving Day 2005. He didn't mention what Peak Oil #'s 3,4,5 and 6 of this century were supposed to look like.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Aside of third world non-existing until 1940s/1950s or so, and "the west" never being a political or any other kind of entity, what that got to do with anything, even if true?

I have no dog in this fight between you and dobhoi. Just an observation re facts.

The third world existed for millennia, as history clearly shows (re the land, the resources, and the people existing, interacting by trade, building things, and fighting wars, etc). At least the College World history, high school, junior high school, and grade school history I took, along with casual reading and observation re history I've done for 40 years as an adult.

Googling "the third world" and using the first hit I got, I see that yes, the TERM was first used in the cold war era. But the term can have a variety of meanings, depending on context, including a common modern meaning re a group of countries with a substandard economic standard of living.

https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/ ... %2FOceania.

Semantics re whether it was CALLED the third world by official entities organizing military affairs or the news media doesn't change that.

The "west" is a generally referred to part of the world, i.e. not the "east". Sometimes parts of it have things in common, so it's referred to as an entity, just like the "east". That doesn't imply "they" were all one of any sort of entity, whether political or anything else.

Again, I think you're just playing semantic games here.

...

Googling "the west as a global geographic entity", again using the first hit I get, is about the western world. That seems to flesh out the point I'm making re "the west" nicely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world


Again, not addressing your argument, but facts are facts and data is data, which IMO, semantics doesn't change.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Rice Futures went through the roof today. Maybe it's the new Famine Indicator. Add the fact that planting season is upon us and it is very hard to plant on a battle field. Things are not looking so good for Europe.

When I search for rice futures (not what I normally watch), I find "rough rice". I see that up .86% today.

Near the top of the range for the month, but certainly nothing dramatic.

Am I looking at the "wrong" rice, or are you using a LOT of hyperbole with "through the roof"?

As a sanity check on the message, when I look today and weekly, the overall tone of the agricultural markets is that they're down. Not exactly consistent with mass fear of lots of starvation, especially given there's a big war on with implications for crops, shipping, production, etc.

Just glancing around, coal is what stunned me. Up about 50% in the past month and a whopping 300% in the past year, SO MUCH for the green idea of coal usage going away real soon now, apparently.

If overall futures tell the tale re what to worry about, then despite the crude oil pullback this week, it's energy that the world is wound up about generally, looking at the past month's and year's gains. (I'm far from convinced chasing such trends pans out well over time, but re reflecting short term fear / worries, sure).

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodities

My understanding is "Rough Rice" is still coated in a thick covering of bran and only useful for animal feed or as seed for the next crop. "Brown Rice" has been partially stripped but still has a thin brown bran coating on it and is recommended by most nutritionists as a slower digesting form. "White or Polished Rice" has had all the bran along with the rice germ stripped off and is over 90% starch. It is good for filler in sparse meals and has plenty of calories but all the vitamins and fiber are pretty much long gone. It cooks much faster and is better for things like making Saki because the yeast can break down some of the starches into Maltose without great difficulty.

Thanks for the information.

Curious, I looked, but still just found "rough rice" futures re anything looking substantial re major exchanges, etc.

So I did a bit of searching.

My first hit had all I knew of consequence about rice and more.

https://beaumont.tamu.edu/elibrary/Stud ... 2017/9.pdf

Yes, rough rice has the hull and humans don't normally eat that. But you get the other types of common rice from that, at least for what we commonly call "brown rice" and "white rice".

Plus, I had NO IDEA that the various specialty rices like Jasmine Rice were from different processing or cooking, but basically the same rice. (I did know that wild rice isn't rice at all, but a grass, thanks to a friend I have who cooks great food and knows about food).

...

So now I know why there is (at least primarily) just one type of rice futures contract. I still don't know why the perception was that rice was off the charts earlier this week, re the post I responded to, but I see that rough rice futures are now back where they were a week ago, so again, no apparent sign of global famine I can see, at least from rice futures.

Especially with agricultural commodities generally down the past week and day again, as of today.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodities

[theluckycountry]

Rice, what is it, as far as I'm concerned it's a novelty food you eat once a month if that! It's very cheap and rarely on the western menu but of course a staple in the poorer countries. Down here the staples are beef, lamb, potatoes peas and carrots. And chicken Kiev of course. The Asians eat rice because it's cheap basically, but even when they attain wealth they still eat it as a regular part of their diet?

Indians have it as a staple too, so all up there's probably 1/2 the world's population dependent on the product. Unfortunately it requires a lot of water to grow.

[AdamB]

The Mainstream Media Admits That We Are Facing “The Worst Food Crisis In Modern History”

People on the other side of the planet are dropping dead from starvation right now, but most people don’t even realize that this is happening. Unfortunately, most people just assume that everything is fine and dandy. If you are one of those people that believe that everything is just wonderful, I would encourage you to pay close attention to the details that I am about to share with you.

[Newfie]

Was that a quote from the article or a teaser about a future post?

[Tanada]

Was that a quote from the article or a teaser about a future post?

Africa’s food crisis is the biggest yet

REUTERS/Abdirahman Hussein

In October, Nadifa Abdi Isak brought her malnourished daughters to hospital in Mogadishu. That day, a nurse said, 42 other children had already been checked into the emergency unit, ravaged by hunger. There were 57 the day before that.

Staff at the Benadir maternity and paediatric hospital said admissions of malnourished children have more than doubled their patient numbers over the past year. They are now treating over 1,000 emergency cases each month.

Half a million children’s lives are at risk from a looming famine in Somalia, according to the United Nations – that’s more than in any country worldwide this century.

Across Africa, from east to west, people are experiencing a food crisis that is bigger and more complex than the continent has ever seen, say diplomats and humanitarian workers.

One in five Africans – a record 278 million people – were already facing hunger in 2021, according to data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It says the situation has worsened.

The number of East Africans experiencing acute food insecurity – when a lack of food puts lives or livelihoods in immediate danger – has spiked by 60% in just the last year, and by nearly 40% in West Africa, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Conflict and climate change are the long-term causes. Heavy debt burdens following the COVID-19 pandemic, rising prices and war in Ukraine have made things much worse as European aid has been sucked away, data and testimony from more than a dozen experts, donors, diplomats, medical staff and men and women in farms and marketplaces across nearly a dozen countries in Africa and beyond shows.

Benadir Hospital is coping, said Dr. Aweis Olow, head of its paediatric department. But referrals from other clinics are accelerating: “Without a lot of help from the rest of the world, the situation will be out of control.”

Here, alongside Isak’s story, are five reasons Africa is suffering from the worst food crisis ever recorded:

1 Climate change

East Africa has missed four consecutive rainy seasons, the worst drought in 40 years, Michael Dunford, the WFP’s East Africa director said. “The situation has never been as bad from a regional perspective as it is today,” he told Reuters.

African countries account for only around 3% of the global emissions responsible for climate change, but suffer more than any other region from its impact.

Of the 20 nations ranked as most vulnerable to climate change, all but four are African, according to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which measures countries’ vulnerability.

Some 22 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia face high levels of acute food insecurity due solely to the drought, a number projected to rise to up to 26 million by February if the rains again fail, the WFP said.
Phases of food insecurity

Three maps of Somalia highlighted to show the current and projected levels of food insecurity. Several regions in northern and central Somalia are projected to experience a food insecurity emergency - the fourth of five increasingly severe phases of insecurity – and parts of the Bay region near the country's capital Mogadishu are projected to experience a famine in mid-2023.

The lack of rainfall has caused crops to fail. In northern Kenya, pastoralists dig deeper and deeper in search of water for their livestock. Traditional Maasai herders, whose culture revolves around their cows, face the choice of selling them or watching them die.

On the other side of the continent, parts of West Africa have been hit by flooding after the most intense rainfall in 30 years. By mid-October, 5 million people and 1 million hectares of farmland were affected, according to the WFP.
Rainfall anomaly compared with historic average

Maps of the Horn of Africa from 2020, 2021 and 2022 showing the rainfall anomaly – or the difference between current rainfall and the 1981-2010 average for the same period – in August, September and October. In 2021 rainfall was well below the historic average across Kenya, Somalia and southern Ethiopia. 2022 saw similar deficits in rainfall.

In Chad, over 19,000 head of livestock were swept away after rivers broke their banks, and in neighbouring Nigeria, flooding has hit 29 of the 36 states.

In October in Benue state, part of Nigeria’s agricultural heartland, farmer Abraham Hon looked out over water stretching to the horizon, covering some 20 hectares of his ruined rice fields.

“You have drought in some places, then you have floods in some places,” he said. “That is a real shift.”

Abraham Hon, Nigerian man sits at the bow of a pirogue as it steers across his flooded fields, pointing towards electrical poles in the distance.

Abraham Hon gestures to his flooded rice fields. REUTERS/Abraham Achirga

Zoomed-in terrain map of southern Somalia, highlighting Nadifa’s journey from her hometown of Dinsoor to the regional capital of Baidoa, and then to Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
“Saving our children”

Isak’s hometown, Dinsoor, is about 370 km (230 miles) from the capital in Somalia’s Bay region. In June, she and her husband and children set out on foot, hoping to escape drought. The journey to Mogadishu took 12 days.

They brought their savings of around $15, and some milk and food.

They walked. “We fled in the hope of saving our children,” she said, seated on a hospital bed with her two girls – Nasib, 4, and Fardawsa, 3 – and an infant on her back.

A day into the journey, they were ambushed by bandits. The robbers took their money and food, but spared their lives. They kept walking. A stranger gave the children a lift on his donkey cart.

After four days they reached the regional capital, Baidoa, but couldn’t find help there. Someone gave them a lift to Mogadishu. There, they found a spot on government land and built a shelter with other displaced people.

Mohamud Abdi Ahmed, an official for the Garasbaley district where the family set up camp, said there were 50,000 displaced families there.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to count them, because more arrive every minute.”

2 Conflict in Africa

Conflict has long been a driver of hunger. War forces civilians from their homes, livelihoods, farms and food sources. It also makes it dangerous to deliver assistance.

The number of displaced people in Africa has tripled over the past decade to a record 36 million in 2022, according to U.N. data. That represents almost half the displaced people in the world. Most were displaced internally within their own countries by conflict.
Africans internally displaced by conflict

Bar chart showing the increasing number of people internally displaced in African countries due to conflict, from close to 10 million in 2010 to more than 25 million at the end of 2021.

Conflicts are worsening across the continent, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a crisis monitoring group.

In 2016, it recorded 3,682 “battles” between armed groups in Africa. There were 7,418 in 2021.

Isak’s country, Somalia, has been unstable since a civil war in the early 1990s and today is a patchwork of clan strongholds, government-controlled areas and zones in the grip of al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked militant group fighting to impose its own rule based on a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.

A U.S. non-profit, Fund for Peace, ranks global states by how fragile they are. In 2022, 15 African nations occupied the top 20 slots of its rankings.

Suffocation

Whenever Isak had food, her youngest children were given top priority.

“The children were getting weaker for months,” she said. She and other mothers say malnourished children swell up and their skin thins. They bruise easily.

Just a week after the family arrived in Mogadishu in June, two of Isak’s daughters - 6-year-old Muna and 7-year-old Hamdi - fell ill one after another.

They were weak and ran fevers, their legs bowed and limbs swelled. They began to cough and struggled to breathe.

People who don’t get enough minerals or vitamins can develop iron-deficiency anaemia, which means they do not have enough healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen to tissues throughout the body.

So as children starve, their bodies slowly suffocate.

Dr. Olow said such cases are becoming commonplace. Children arriving at Benadir Hospital receive oxygen, emergency feeding and, if needed, blood transfusions. Just 3% die, Olow said.

By the time Isak brought Muna and Hamdi for treatment, it was too late.

“The doctors could not help them, because they were about to die when we reached the hospital,” Isak said.

3 Conflict in Europe

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, which Moscow calls a “special military operation,” added to Africa's problems.

The crisis distracted wealthy governments’ humanitarian agencies for the first half of this year, said a senior Western government official involved in humanitarian response in Africa, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“When Ukraine happened, it sucked all the oxygen out of the room,” he said.

As the food crisis deepened earlier this year, the African Development Bank set up an emergency food production fund of $1.5 billion aimed at helping African farmers produce 38 million tonnes of wheat, corn, rice and soybeans.

But needs across Africa’s crises have risen by 13% over the past year alone, the data shows. While total donor funding over that time has increased 12%, it currently meets just half of requirements.

European countries in particular have cut aid in Africa. European governments contributed 21% of humanitarian relief aid to African countries in 2022, down 16 percentage points since 2018.
Share of humanitarian aid to Africa from:

Stacked line chart showing the percentage breakdown of African humanitarian aid highlighting the decrease in European donations with the EU and member states contributing 17% in 2022, down from 24% in 2018. Other European countries dropped to 4% of funding in 2022, down from 12% in 2018.

Some countries – such as the United States – have since boosted humanitarian assistance budgets, but the shortfalls remain, a Reuters analysis of U.N. data shows.
Funding appeal and donations for humanitarian aid in Africa

Stacked line chart showing funding appeal and donations for humanitarian aid in Africa with the U.S. government funding $5.9 billion in 2022, up 112% since 2018. Other funding in 2022 reached $3.3 billion, and appeals not funded was $9.2 billion.

Four of the five African countries receiving the most humanitarian funding under the 2022 aid appeal are located in or border the drought-stricken Horn of Africa region.

Stacked line charts showing the rise in funding and appeals for the five African countries receiving the most donations in 2022 – South Sudan with $1.63 billion, Ethiopia with $1.57 billion, Somalia with $1.25 billion, Democratic Republic of Congo with $887 million and Sudan with $825 million

That’s leading to some tough choices.

The WFP has, in some cases, been forced to reduce rations, said Ollo Sib, a senior researcher for the agency in West Africa.

“We can keep people alive, but we don't just want to keep people alive,” he said.

Chad, for example, currently hosts 577,000 refugees from other countries – the largest group in West Africa. Since 2020, conflict there has also more than doubled the number of internally displaced Chadians to around 381,000.

Faced with overwhelming needs, the WFP has already begun reducing rations for some refugees. And it told Reuters that, without more funding soon, it could be forced to suspend food assistance for all but the 10% of refugees considered the most vulnerable.

Moscow’s Ukraine campaign also throttled grain exports.

The U.N. and Turkey brokered a deal in July to unblock three Black Sea ports. Under that initiative, 615 vessels left Ukrainian ports between Aug. 1 and Dec. 13 carrying over 13.8 million tonnes of corn, wheat, rapeseed and sunflower oil.

Just 11 ships were destined for sub-Saharan Africa, however.

“It's making a contribution. But there is no silver bullet,” said the WFP’s Dunford.

Disruptions caused by that war have also provoked a fertiliser shortage. Where stocks are available, prices have risen beyond the means of many farmers. The result will be smaller harvests next year: In West Africa, the WFP estimates cereal production could fall 20%.
A woman lies on her side on a hospital bed next to her daughter, who has bandages on her hand and head and a tube through her nose. The imprint of the child’s ribs are visible through her skin.

“They don’t know they’re dead”

The Benadir hospital can’t always help.

“Sometimes mothers bring us dead children,” said Farhia Moahmud Jama, head nurse at the paediatric emergency unit. “And they don’t know they’re dead.”

Weakened by hunger, camp residents are vulnerable to disease and people are dying due to a lack of food, said Nadifa Hussein Mohamed, who managed the camp where Isak’s family initially stayed.

“Maybe the whole world is hungry and donors are bankrupt, I don’t know,” she said. “But we’re calling out for help, and we do not see relief.”

Isak and her husband said some nights, armed men threaten and beat the residents: “They want to sell the land.”

Ahmed, the district official, said security around the camps was tight.

Reuters

[yellowcanoe]

Remember Band Aid which raised $127 million for famine relief in 1984? Since then the population of Somalia has almost tripled and the population of Ethiopia has more than tripled.

I have to shake my head at people who think it is ok for African countries to keep growing their populations because their per capita resource consumption is quite low in comparison to first world countries. Yes, consumption of resources in first world countries is a big problem but having a rapidly growing population in an area that is prone to drought greatly increases the chances of having a famine and the severity of them. It doesn't look like any musicians are coming to their aid this time.

[mousepad]

It doesn't look like any musicians are coming to their aid this time.

Don't you worry. Generous europe is standing at the ready to take in all of africa's and the middle east's surplus population.

[Newfie]

There are 2 reason I have hope for Ukraine’s eventual victory.

1: Sholtz and aBiden now own this war, neither will survive Ukraine’s defeat.
2: Ukraine’s decreasing food output, aided by Argentinas 3 years ling drought, will eventually for a mass migration Europe can not tolerate. The best remedy for that is to return Ukraine to full production as soon as possible.

[theluckycountry]

I have to shake my head at people who think it is ok for African countries to keep growing their populations because their per capita resource consumption is quite low in comparison to first world countries.

I don't think, anyone thinks nowadays, at least not anyone in government or university. They seem to just react and say what is the least offensive, hoping that what they say will not be construed as offensive in 5 years time and come back to haunt them.

Africa has had an interesting evolution over the centuries, from Slave farm to colonial occupied territory, and now to basket case. Ethiopia may have bucked the trend though? I watched a youtube on it yesterday and was quite surprised, though this could be just another Pyongyang, a shining city surrounded by starving millions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRZd1xzY7o0

I would have investigated further to find out the truth of the matter but I really couldn't give a toss, I went bike riding up in the twisties instead.

[theluckycountry]

There are 2 reason I have hope for Ukraine’s eventual victory.

Unfortunately by that time there may not be much left of the nation for the inhabitants to enjoy. It will take generations for the people there to get back to a normal free lifestyle I imagine, and there will always be the threat of Russia on their border. Still, better than the days under Stalin.