Those who read my diaries will recognize a few common themes with policy musings dominated by renewable fertilizer, peak oil, the banking mess, and related issues.
I've been working on renewable nitrogen fertilizer for the last year and I knew it was getting bad out there. I'd been hearing about problems in the potassium and phosphorus inputs, the other two legs of the N-P-K triad that supports our crops, but today it's different. Where once I had hints and analysis from interested amateurs today I've got a collection of stories from an agronomist who works in the field. He and I are on our way to providing Congressional staff briefings on this just as soon as the new Congress gets settled and that is a good step, but I'm not sure if this issue can wait until February.
Even if we could wave a magic wand on Tuesday night after the polls close and usher Obama into office with a shiny new Sixty Democratic seat Senate standing behind him I don't think we can stop what is coming at us ... the crops are already in the ground, but deprived of vital nutrients.
(My original work on this was published at The Cutting Edge News.)
Every plant that grows takes in nitrogen (N), phosporus (P), and potassium (K), the NPK triad that supports our agriculture. Nitrogen is either fixed by legumes in conjunction with bacteria in their roots or produced by humans, some 70% of this being done with hydrogen stripped from natural gas and the rest being made with coal. Phosphorus and potassium are minerals mined from the Earth itself. Supplies of all three of these vital nutrients are in direct trouble due to resource depletion or they're not making it into the fields due to problems associated with the massive deflation taking places.
Let's have a look at some of the reports and their implications.
USDA Sec. Ed Schafer last week said he is concerned the credit crunch could "have an effect on ag production." How? Well... if growers can't get the operating loans for 2009 production, they'll obviously have to cut back on some inputs... and EVERYBODY seems to be thinking growers will cut back on fertilizer use in 2009. Just look at the stock values of companies like Mosaic Companies, Potash Corp Saskatchewan and Terra Nitrogen Companies. While nearly all stocks plunged last week (and today), the stock prices on fertilizer companies really dove last week as nearly every "street analyst" is looking for lower U.S. fertilizer demand for 2009.
I've written about this one before – well fertilized wheat is 14% protein while unfertilized wheat grown on fallow ground is 8%. Farmers in the Dakotas seem to be using about 60% of the normal fertilizer amount and if the relationship is linear protein percentages will drop to about 11% and there will be an attendant yield decrease. Some countries, like Egypt, have people surviving on $2 per day and eating subsidized wheat bread. Cut the protein in it by a quarter, which is what this change in fertilization means, and people that were making it before suddenly aren't any more. Egypt has already seen food riots. This problem is past tense, too – the northern hemisphere winter wheat is already in the ground.
Pro Farmer crop consultant Dr. Cordonnier tells us Brazilian fertilizer use is down for the 2008-09 crop -- some growers are reportedly cutting fertilizer rates by as much as 25% to 30% from normal levels. If that ground built up some fertility reserves over the years (not likely), Brazilian farmers that have grown beans, on beans, on beans, on beans, etc... might not see much of a hit on this crop, but they could on next year's crop. And, it's not likely that ground built up much "reserve fertility," so they will probably see the yield hit this year if the reduced fertilizer use is an industry-wide happening.
The soy farmers in Brazil are doing the similar things to what our wheat farmers are doing – less fertilizer. This is a little different though; here they're skimping on phosphorus and potassium. Yields will drop from this practice and the credit crisis makes this even more dangerous, as acres are simply going out of production:
Recent rains have improved seeding conditions, allowing farmers to begin planting soybeans in parts of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Farmers now face another problem, the lack of fertilizer. Even farmers with access to credit have not received their fertilizer due to a distribution delay. A Cuiaba newspaper reports that one producer who normally plants about 15,000 acres of soybeans will plant 10,000 this year because he did not receive enough fertilizer
The Brazilians aren't clowning around – they know this is important and they'll nationalize the resources needed to keep agriculture stable if that is what it takes to get their yields they need.
CUIABA, Brazil, May 20 (Reuters) - Brazil may nationalize privately held mineral deposits used to make fertilizer to bring down farm production costs, Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes said.
The threat from Latin America's farming powerhouse, which is heavily dependent on fertilizer imports, is the latest in a regional trend to bring natural resources under greater state control as world oil and food prices push new highs.
This is the one that really got my attention.
"Recent food price rises are a powerful reminder that access to ever more affordable food cannot be taken for granted," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a foreword to a bleak new report by Britain's Cabinet Office.
The report says the task of feeding a larger, richer world population, while simultaneously tackling climate change, is far greater than imagined. The World Bank estimates the cost of food staples has risen 83 percent in three years.
Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London's City University, said junk food will remain readily available, but good quality, nutritious produce could become scarce worldwide.
"There has been 60 years of silence on this issue," he said. "We haven't had any sort of overview of food policy since the end of the Second World War. I think we need to accept that food is once again in a wartime state."
It seems hunger is coming to a place where educated folks with lifestyles fairly similar to ours live. Are we different ... or does the Bush administration have its head up its ass on this point, too?
If I had a globe in the house I'd put a piece of duct tape over Pakistan. I don't even want to know it exists. The poorly controlled northwest frontier, the U.S. incursions into the area now, the religious extremism, the water stress, the ongoing dispute with India over Kashmir, the nuclear weapons; I'd probably use a double layer to cover it up.
This piece I found a delight to read for the translation quality but the message is frightful; already troubled Pakistan will soon not have enough to eat.
LAHORE - President Pakistan Kissan Movement, Ch Ashfaq has strongly criticized the non-availability of fertilizer in the market by saying that the shortage would badly affect the yields of different agricultural crops.
He said this while completing the tour of Punjab and while arriving at Lahore and talking to newsmen said that the farmers are running from pillar to post to find fertilizer but certain black marketers and dealers of fertilizer have hidden their fertilizer stocks in their secret godowns and are indulging into black marketing, demanding high prices like Rs.50 70 extra on each fertilizer bag. Now the situation is that poor farmers standing crops like sugarcane, plantation of cotton and rice are planted without fertilizer and wheat yields the farmers would get that worries me.
The United Nations has noticed and their reporting pulls no punches.
A world fertilizer forecast report, due to be published by the U.N. this week but seen by the Guardian, states that prices will remain high for at least three years and possibly longer. Prices have mostly doubled and in some cases risen by 500 per cent in 15 months as U.S. farmers have rushed to plant more biofuel crops, and countries such as India and China have bought fertilizer stocks in large quantities to guarantee food stocks. But while the unprecedented price explosion has barely affected commercial farmers, it is leading to civil unrest among small farmers in developing countries. There have been fertilizer riots or demonstrations in Vietnam, India, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Taiwan in the past few months.
Pakistan is the number one name we don't want to see on that list and I'd move Nigeria into the number two slot. They've already got serious oil production troubles due to unfair treatment of the Ijaw natives of the Niger river delta region and putting any sort of serious food stress atop that will wind up the petroleum sabotage. Things like this are the beginnings of cascading failures. Not enough food leads to less oil production leads to even less food, and so it goes until we've tumbled back to the solar maximum.
The British report, I think, is the one to reread until it all sinks in.
With food and energy prices soaring around the world, a constant supply of high-quality, affordable food is no longer guaranteed, the officials are warning Britons. That could mean an era of scarcity like Britain's 1940-54 food rationing, during the war and its aftermath
(UPDATE:
My first article on this was published over at The Cutting Edge News.
City kids reading this might like to get an up close, personal look at the corn harvest. I tried to get in some wheat harvesting, too, but I got pulled back east to a conference hosted by Set America Free, an organization dedicated to breaking our dependence on foreign oil for our liquid fuel needs. The Iranians get it, so why don't we?
OK, got some additional links for you, but I need to sort them a bit and try to write coherently. This surprise lift to Recommend by the overnight shift is, well, surprising the day before the election. Thank you for noticing and caring.
I should give thanks to Edwin Black, who noticed my writing after we met at the Ammonia Fuel Network conference in Minneapolis, where he was promoting his new book on dealing with an oil crisis entitled simply The Plan. I now get to be a 'front pager' on a site with a million and a half daily readers :-)
Oh, here is a little more on wheat protein concerns, a DKos diary from a couple of weeks ago.
The Cutting Edge News has just published a piece I wrote on using Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion to produce ammonia, which would alleviate some of our fertilizer concerns. I'm talking with the program manager from back when the Department of Energy had an OTEC effort and we're going to get a technical update out on this which will likely be published first at The Oil Drum.
Oh, there is a fine pie fight down below - Translator and G2Geek seem to have hit it off. Both comment on my diaries from time to time, I actually talk to G2Geek on the phone some times, and may I suggest no HRs for either, despite the apparent venom. I think it's pre-election jitters.
This ticket punch entity, on the other hand, appears to be a cleverly coded shell script ...
OK, enough with the pie fight. Why don't you guys give it a rest, say by taking the time to go research this Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken in the Sudan and determining if anyone bothered to save this toddler from the vulture?
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Orangeclouds115 has a refutation to my diary that deserves a read.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
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