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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Homesteader » Sun 13 May 2007, 07:50:52

I handed an article out to my science classes this week that described the glaciers that feed the major rivers in Southeast Asia are melting at a rate of 7% annually. They will be gone in 20 years. The rivers included the Yangtze, the Mekong and others. It looks like a third or more of the world's population is simply going to run out of water.

The Ogallala aquifer recharges so slowly it is better thought of as a non-renewable resource.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Bas » Sun 13 May 2007, 07:56:48

Novus wrote:If those farmers started growing again then fertilizer prices would go up and the output of other farmers mostly from the third world would decrease. That adds the additional cost of transportation to food grown in Europe to be sold in the third world. It is for certain we have reached peak food.


I beg to differ on that. As food prices will go up, demand for grains and potatoes will go up at the cost of crops that produce much less calories/acre; Also meat will take a hit; you need ten times as much ground to produce a calorie of meat than you need for the average vegetable/grain.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Newsseeker » Sun 13 May 2007, 09:31:25

Wait until the effects of global warming kick in. Then whatever you have in reserve is all your going to have for decades!
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Zardoz » Sun 13 May 2007, 10:21:32

Homesteader wrote:...the glaciers that feed the major rivers in Southeast Asia are melting at a rate of 7% annually. They will be gone in 20 years. The rivers included the Yangtze, the Mekong and others. It looks like a third or more of the world's population is simply going to run out of water...

They're already having severe water availability problems in several areas in India. We'll start seeing the first of the water catastrophes in Asia within a few years.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Fredrik » Sun 13 May 2007, 12:41:17

SoothSayer wrote:However are there any key crops, feeds, fertilisers, pesticides etc which the UK simply MUST have?


This is an essential question, and applicable to all countries.

If fertilizers ran out completely, I guess they could be substituted with animal/human excrement, but those naturally wouldn't be as effective.

GW will bring more crop diseases, bugs etc. to northern latitudes, so pesticides will be needed even more desperately than before. I wonder if they could be produced without fossil fuels on a meaningful scale?
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Gazzatrone » Sun 13 May 2007, 13:04:19

Leanan wrote:Well, so much for the plan to make ethanol from corn and other crops...


I would have thought using Corn for Ethanol was the reason for the stock fall.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby shortonoil » Sun 13 May 2007, 15:50:12

I would have thought using Corn for Ethanol was the reason for the stock fall.


Grain stocks were falling long before ethanol made its debut as an fuel additive.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby cube » Sun 13 May 2007, 17:13:43

As what Marie Antoinette would say:

"Let them eat cake!"

Damn I'm loving this.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby frankthetank » Sun 13 May 2007, 21:34:01

What happens when there is no carry over? With increasing population/less oil, isn't this inevitable?

No wonder i'm a doomer, everything you look at (climate/food/oil/markets) all signal horrible troubles ahead.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby PhebaAndThePilgrim » Mon 14 May 2007, 00:39:27

Good evening, from Pheba, from the farm:
When our ancestors first stuck a shovel in the soil of this continent (north America), the average depth of topsoil was 24 inches.
The average topsoil depth of the nation's soil is now 6 inches.
In some places the topsoil is 4 inches.
This nation is basically feeding the world on 6 inches of topsoil.
Topsoil is a renewable resource. Earthworms take a few hundred years to make an inch of topsoil, but that won't do us any good.
Farming today is just pouring petroleum on 6 inches of dirt to raise crops.
Most of the farmland in the U.S. that is in the CRP program is farm land that is being rested to prevent erosion and soil depletion.
A lot of farmers around here are removing land from CRP when the time limits are up. The farm land was making more money in CRP than in farming, but farmers can make more growing corn for ethanol than they can in CRP.

A lot of the farm land in this nation is played out farm land. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is vital even to raise hay for cattle.
We have a farmer near us who raises crops on several thousand acres.
Last year we had a drought. This farmer has a gigantic irrigation system that he supports with an irrigation lake.
He let the crops wither and die.
It was cheaper for him to write the crops off as a loss, collect federal subsidies, and then file an insurance claim, than it was for him to spend the money pumping the water out of the irrigation lake. Irrigation pumps are very very expensive to run.
They take a lot of energy.
As farmers put more and more acreage into corn for ethanol, less of other crops will be raised. The shortages of other crops will cause an increase in the price per bushel of the other crops.
Wheat is already going up for that reason.
Corn takes more synthetic nitrogen fertilizer than any other crop, about 1# per bushel of corn.
And, although cotton and tobacco use the most pesticides as a large crop, corn is very high on the list also.
Actually, the highest usage of petroleum based pesticides is for lawn care. Ditto for runoff from nitrogen fertilizer. Farmers don't waste the stuff. It is too expensive. Lawn care is the stupidest invention of modern man.
California is the state that uses the most pesticides. 90% of pesticide use takes place on lawns, and in California.
The single food product that takes the most pesticide is the strawberry.
Cotton, tobacco, and corn all take large amounts of pesticide.
There are 3 main types of pesticide, insecticide for bugs, herbicide for weeds, and fungicide for mold and fungus. Strawberries take a lot of fungicide.
Transporting 5 calories of strawberry from California to New York costs 435 calories of petroleum.
I don't know how doomed we are, but I know something's gotta give, and very soon.
My daughter, who has never read a peak oil book in her life, and doesn't even have the internet recently said that she has this feeling that we are all headed for a brick wall at 90 miles an hour. She has good instincts.
Hope this info has been helpful.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Jack » Mon 14 May 2007, 08:58:05

Thank you, Pheba. I know nothing about farming; so your post is enlightening.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby pedalling_faster » Mon 14 May 2007, 09:56:17

Jack wrote:At some point, individuals and nations will have to decide who survives and who doesn't.


i believe they already have, though it's not like there's a smoking gun email with list of names.

a "market based solution", i think is the euphemism.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby PhebaAndThePilgrim » Mon 14 May 2007, 19:02:39

Good day from Pheba, from the farm:
What a georgeous day here in mid-Mo. Low humidity. Temps in the low 80's.
I get a big kick out of the folks that think they can do the Little House on the Prairie scenario as our consumer society unwinds.
We have 156 acres, and we are not raising a vegetable garden this summer. We do not have the time or the energy. We are busy with calving season, and we are bottle feeding an orphan calf. We are already behind on haying, and that is full time for a few weeks.
Gardening is labor intensive. Gardening also has a huge learning curve. There are so many variables and so much that can grow wrong. that's farming!
Since my hubby and I have been married I have learned never to expect a straight answer from him or any other farmer.
The answer is always: "it all depends". Doesn't matter what the question is, the answer is always the same.
Farming is risky business, with so many variables, weather, insects, market prices, etc.
I see farmers doing some desparate things to try to make money feeding cattle.
We have neighbors that have fed haylage, silage, and chicken litter. yes, chicken litter. that is chicken poop mixed with the bedding. Actually, a very common practice. We don't do it. Yuk!
Corn gluten is a by-product of ethanol production. Our neighbors are now feeding corn gluten. Unfortunately corn gluten spoils fast. Real fast. You should smell rotting corn gluten.
I have never smelled anything worse in my life. Not even a hog operation smells as bad. Last week we had to close up the entire house.
As farmers are calculating the profit margin of corn gluten as a side-product of ethanol production, I am wondering if they are figuring in the cost to transport the corn gluten, and the waste percentage when it spoils before it can be fed.
I have posted this belief before, but I will say it again; ethanol is insane.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby shortonoil » Mon 14 May 2007, 19:26:01

Phebagirl, thanks for your post, it is something that every human on earth needs to hear. Along the Chesapeake Bay, where I live, was once found some of the most fertile and productive farm land on the planet. In one hundred and fifty years it has been reduced to land that won’t grow a good crop of weeds without the application of massive amounts of nitrogen based fertilizer. The area is now like a giant sponge; on to which they pour huge quantities of petro chemicals, to make possible the production of soy beans, wheat and corn. I have also heard that the heart land of the country, the Mid West, is in a very similar condition.

All the absurd discourse about the world’s population growing to 9 billion is just that, absurd. The one thing that I know is that once the petroleum supply, that makes our food production possible, starts to decline, so will the food from which it is derived.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Zardoz » Tue 15 May 2007, 01:03:03

Phebagirl wrote:...I get a big kick out of the folks that think they can do the Little House on the Prairie scenario as our consumer society unwinds.

Very few of them have even the vaguest idea of what farming is like.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby Pablo2079 » Tue 15 May 2007, 01:22:17

I had heard that Corn Gluten can be used as a fertilizer, but it must be applied after the seeds germinate. I believe it is the active ingredient in some stuff called Preen that is used to stop weeds from germinating.

Not sure how plausible it would be to spread it after seeds have germinated though....
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby joewp » Tue 15 May 2007, 01:25:46

Zardoz wrote:
Phebagirl wrote:...I get a big kick out of the folks that think they can do the Little House on the Prairie scenario as our consumer society unwinds.

Very few of them have even the vaguest idea of what farming is like.


Least of all former NYC mayors who actually look better as woman.
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Re: World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption

Unread postby SevenTen » Tue 15 May 2007, 01:30:50

Phebagirl wrote:Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is vital even to raise hay for cattle.

And I just ran across this:

Market Hit by US Hay Shortages
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says hay stocks are down 30 per cent on last year and are at their lowest level since 1950.
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