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Newfie wrote:I’ve been looking for a concise source of data that shows stats for world grain imports and exports. Rice, wheat, corn, soybean. Ideally it would show where major exporters sold and where major importers bought.

I find a lot of BS statistics but not much that puts things into a global perspective. I found statistics.con which MAY have these stats but they want money for access.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The United Nations World Food Programme said on Thursday that a record 45 million people in the 16-nation Southern African Development Community faced growing hunger following repeated drought, widespread flooding and economic disarray.

Southern Africa is in the grips of a severe drought, as climate change wreaks havoc in impoverished countries already struggling to cope with extreme natural disasters, such as Cyclone Idai which devastated Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi in 2019.

Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a decade, marked by soaring inflation and shortages of food, fuel, medicines and electricity.

"This hunger crisis is on a scale we've not seen before and the evidence shows it's going to get worse," the WFP's Regional Director for Southern Africa, Lola Castro, said in a statement.

"The annual cyclone season has begun and we simply cannot afford a repeat of the devastation caused by last year's unprecedented storms."

In December, the United Nations said it was procuring food assistance for 4.1 million Zimbabweans, a quarter of the population of a country where shortages are being exacerbated by runaway inflation and climate-induced drought.

"Zimbabwe is in the throes of its worst hunger emergency in a decade, with 7.7 million people – half the population – seriously food insecure," the agency said.

In Zambia and drought-stricken Lesotho, 20% of the population faces a food crisis, as do 10% of Namibians.

Azothius wrote:Record 45 million people across Southern Africa face hunger: U.N. food agency
https://www.yahoo.com/news/record-45-million-people-across-122151373.html

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The United Nations World Food Programme said on Thursday that a record 45 million people in the 16-nation Southern African Development Community faced growing hunger following repeated drought, widespread flooding and economic disarray.

Southern Africa is in the grips of a severe drought, as climate change wreaks havoc in impoverished countries already struggling to cope with extreme natural disasters, such as Cyclone Idai which devastated Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi in 2019.

Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a decade, marked by soaring inflation and shortages of food, fuel, medicines and electricity.

"This hunger crisis is on a scale we've not seen before and the evidence shows it's going to get worse," the WFP's Regional Director for Southern Africa, Lola Castro, said in a statement.

"The annual cyclone season has begun and we simply cannot afford a repeat of the devastation caused by last year's unprecedented storms."

In December, the United Nations said it was procuring food assistance for 4.1 million Zimbabweans, a quarter of the population of a country where shortages are being exacerbated by runaway inflation and climate-induced drought.

"Zimbabwe is in the throes of its worst hunger emergency in a decade, with 7.7 million people – half the population – seriously food insecure," the agency said.

In Zambia and drought-stricken Lesotho, 20% of the population faces a food crisis, as do 10% of Namibians.

Human activity has made an ocean circulation pattern misbehave—triggering a weird confluence of events that has caused the infestations.

The insects behind the mayhem are desert locusts, which, despite their name, thrive following periods of heavy rainfall that trigger blooms of vegetation across their normally arid habitats in Africa and the Middle East. Experts say a prolonged bout of exceptionally wet weather, including several rare cyclones that struck eastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula over the last 18 months, are the primary culprit. The recent storminess, in turn, is related to the the Indian Ocean Dipole, an ocean temperature gradient that was recently extremely pronounced, something that’s also been linked to the devastating bushfires in eastern Australia.

Recent research suggests this pattern could become more common in a warming world. A 2014 paper led by Cai found that under a worst-case carbon emissions scenario, the frequency of extremely positive Indian Ocean Dipole events could increase nearly threefold by the end of the century. In a follow up study in 2018, researchers found that if the planet warms just 1.5 degrees—a target the world could pass within the next decade—extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole phases could still double. According to Cai, there’s already evidence of the Indian Ocean Dipole trending more positively overall.

Whether that will lead to more plagues of locusts is an open question, but it’s a worrying possibility. Ocean circulation patterns aside, climate change is warming the oceans everywhere, which is expected to trigger more intense downpours. In the Arabian Sea, recent research suggests global warming is already making fall cyclones more intense. At the same time, other research has tied climate change to worsening droughts and failing rains across East Africa, painting a picture of an uncertain future, but one that’s almost certainly more dangerous.

While scientists continue to explore where East Africa’s climate is headed, aid organizations are scrambling to prevent the locust crisis from getting worse. Last month, the FAO called on the international community to pony up $76 million for pest control operations and to protect farmers and pastoralists in five countries afflicted by locusts. Cressman is hopeful the money will come, but he’s concerned about the timing. As the insects continue to multiply, the need for aid could rise considerably, especially if more aggressive control measures aren’t implemented soon.

Swarms invade the Persian Gulf and continue to breed in the Horn of Africa

The situation remains extremely alarming in the Horn of Africa, specifically Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia where widespread breeding is in progress and new swarms are expected to form in the coming weeks. In the past few days, there has been a significant movement of swarms over the Arabian Peninsula, unrelated to the Horn of Africa, that reached both sides of the Persian Gulf.

Kenya. Swarms continue to be reported in northern and central areas where they are mostly mature and have laid eggs. Hatching is causing an increasing number of hopper bands to form with new swarm formation expected in the coming weeks. Mature swarms are also present along the shores of Lake Turkana. Aerial and ground control operations continue.

Ethiopia. The situation is similar to Kenya with widespread swarms, breeding and hatching in Somali, Oromiya and SNNPR regions, including the Rift Valley. Movements further north can be expected as well as from adjacent areas of Somalia and Kenya.

Somalia. Breeding continues in the northeast where new immature swarms are expected to form in about one week or so.

Uganda. A mature swarm arrived in the northeast from adjacent areas of western Kenya on 24 February.

South Sudan. Only remnants of an earlier mature swarm have been seen in the southeastern county of Magwi. A second mature swarm was seen near the border on 23 February.

Tanzania. No new reports of swarms.

DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo). A small group of mature Desert Locust arrived on the western shore of Lake Albert near Bunia on 21 February after crossing northern Uganda on strong northeasterly winds. The country last received Desert Locust in 1944.

Saudi Arabia. Ground control operations increased against hopper bands on the Red Sea coast and immature groups and swarms in the interior.

Yemen. Another generation of breeding is in progress on the Red Sea coast where hatching and early instar hopper bands are forming. Immature and mature swarms were reported in the interior during this past week. Surveys remain limited and control could not be carried out.

Persian Gulf. During several days of strong winds, dense immature swarms arrived in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and along the southwest coast of Iran between Bushehr and Kish Island on 20-21 February. More swarms are likely during periods of southerly winds. Control operations were immediately mounted in Iran

“If you pull out one little thing in that specialized, centralized, consolidated chain, then everything crashes,” said Mary Hendrickson, a rural sociology professor at University of Missouri. “Now we have an animal welfare catastrophe, an environmental catastrophe, a farmer catastrophe, and a worker catastrophe altogether, and we can trace a lot of this back to the pursuit of efficiency.”

Good Morning:



I truly hope this email find you and your family well. So far so good on our end health-wise, except there have been a few articles this past week about COVID cases in Umatilla County spiking. Hopefully that will reverse soon and things will open back up. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, on to farming. The good news is you all had the best stand of wheat I have ever seen – seriously. I have never been so excited about cutting a crop as I was coming into this spring. However, it has decided that it does NOT want to rain here yet and we have experience very near record low rain fall amounts in both March and April. At the ranch here, we are behind nearly 4” of rainfall year to date = about 25% of the annual rain fall. In addition on the 13th of April we received one of the hardest frosts we have had in April – it got down to 17 degrees here and stayed below 20 for over 7 hours. That is very hard on the wheat and inflicts significant damage in the low areas and draws. Needless to say, the wheat it starting to show stress. There is still a chance to cut an average crop…..if it were to starting raining. However, the long-range forecast is not looking accommodating. I attached the 50 year monthly weather history for the Pendleton Airport. The airport gets 3-4 less inches of rain per year that we do here, but it provides a good look. So, what is the downside? Thanks goodness for crop insurance. As you know, we budget 90 bushels per acre. Crop insurance does not allow you to cover 100% of your budget or historical production, but close. You can purchase as high as 85%, but it is very expensive and additional coverage is barely above the additional premium costs. Furthermore, we have really focused on yield the past few years and have raised the average historical yield by nearly 10 bushels per acre. This has really helped in increasing the insurance coverage. So, we use/buy 80% coverage which gives us all a floor or worst case scenario of about 75 bushels per acre. I will keep you posted as we get closer to harvest, but I wanted to give you a heads up we will not be able to send you a yield report that is record breaking this year – a huge bummer, because we had a real chance to do so.



With regard to the wheat market – it is holding in there around the $5.25 level. While it is below costs of production for us (at budgeted yields), it is performing better than most of the other agricultural commodities. Thank goodness most of the wheat is exported and people are buying ramen noodles right now – that is much needed support for the soft white wheat market. Fuel and fertilizer prices have gone down, which is helping also. I have been following the disaster programs very closely. USDA has announced there is money available for crops that have lost over 5% of their value (which wheat has), but they have not given any detail on what or how that money will be paid out. I will keep you posted on this as well. It will be very welcome (a polite way of saying very much neededJ) this year for all of us, given the dry year and the market disruption.



With regard to the ag markets overall, it is truly a disaster. Corn, soybeans, and the animal protein markets are really getting hit hard. Milk prices have dropped from $0.18/pound to $0.11 since January. Many of the dairies are having to dump milk. This causes dairy farmers to take their worst cows out of production and cull them to the meat market. This puts pressure on the meat market and means there are less animals that need feed. Less feed demand means lower feed prices = lower hay and corn prices. As you can see, it is a tough cycle – the primary commodities get into a downward spiral. Vegetables and other markets are suffering just as bad if not worse. My day-job centers around the potato and onion business. With restaurant’s closed, food service suppliers and getting crushed. There are literally hundreds of thousands of tons of potatoes and onions being dumped, fed, or spread back out on the fields in the Northwest right now. Many of the processing plants are idled back and some are even shut down with virus outbreaks. We have a partner who is a vegetable grower in the Imperial and Salinas Valleys of California – they are having to disk down fresh vegetables and cut back plantings from lack of demand. Applebee’s and Subway are two the chains I work with and have been great customers over the years. Applebee’s has reported to us that their sales volumes are off 90% and Subway has told us they have closed 5,000 stores (as a reference, they had 32,000 stores in North America at their peak). Hard to get your head around on what to plant to, how to staff, and overall keep a smile on your face – but, as they say, it can always be worse. Not meaning to be a downer, but a few of you have asked for updates on bigger picture items and there are very few “high-fives” out there right now. However, frozen vegetables and wheat seem to be holding in there ok relative to the broader market – which is solid for you/us as that is what the Helix/Walla Walla ground can produce.



In summary, I am sorry to have to report the dry year and likely resulting poor crop. However, we do have a floor to the downside with the insurance and I think there may be other mitigation to come. I have been working closely with grower groups, agencies, elected officials (both state and federal), and anyone else I can think of that may have programs. Perspective is also important and we keep the small business owners & employees in the restaurant and hospitality businesses in our thoughts as they aren’t even able to open their doors.



Again, I hope you and your family are well. We were planning to make trips to see you all this spring, but will rain check for post COVID-times.



Best Regards,

XXXXX

Newfie wrote:even if Applebee’s and Wendy’s don’t buy still someone eats.

My thoughts exactly. What I'm thinking is there is already huge waste baked into the food system such that when people shift to eating at home less agricultural products are needed. I already know that a ton of the food that gets produced never goes in anybody's stomach in the end but this may be concrete evidence of such. It does, however, show how much of a carrying capacity buffer exists. Food shortages in the short term are really going to be more due to mismanagement and other above-ground issues.

REAL Green wrote: Up until now since I did not need the money this activity was focused on permaculture of small stocking rates accommodating nature into the equation. The wild critters love my grazing system because I leave food and cover for them. In fact, fields that have light grazing are better than fields left to over grow. Grazing was once part of the natural ecosystem. Too little is as bad as too much. I am a green prepper so food is part of the effort too.

vtsnowedin wrote:

REAL Green wrote: Up until now since I did not need the money this activity was focused on permaculture of small stocking rates accommodating nature into the equation. The wild critters love my grazing system because I leave food and cover for them. In fact, fields that have light grazing are better than fields left to over grow. Grazing was once part of the natural ecosystem. Too little is as bad as too much. I am a green prepper so food is part of the effort too.

Do you find a hard grazing with the goats every so often helps trim back the weed species that the cattle pass by?