Fertilizer Use

So, when we say "fertilizer", which countries use the most?

The U.S. is obviously first, with Argentina and Brazil close and India and China far behind, right?

No--it's China, India, U.S. in that order. Source.

ACRE Confuses Even the EU

From the DTN blog citing an EU assessment of ACRE:

"Heralded as an innovative new risk management tool, ACRE is yet another countercyclical scheme, this time for revenue," the report highlights. "So it is business as usual in that the countercyclical nature of US farm support continues, with a bewildering array of schemes all addressing the same issues. For many observers it represents a significant step backwards in terms of agricultural policy."

See also Keith Good's FarmPolicy which puts this assessment in the broader context of challenges to free trade.

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming

That's the title of a fine movie from Cold War days; put it on your Netflix queue. As I've written before, I always anticipated adverse impacts on US field crops from an expansion of agriculture in the former USSR countries. Having predicted this, not in writing, on and off for the last 20 years, maybe I'll be able to claim 20/20 foresight. Via Farm Policy:

"With respect to agricultural trade and grains, Tom Polansek reported in today’s Wall Street Journal that, “The Black Sea region has muscled its way into the exclusive club of the world’s top wheat exporters and is expected to continue stealing business away from its most prominent member, the U.S.

Finally I'm Right

Ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, I've been figuring ag prices would be pressured as Russian farmers became more efficient. Fortunately, I've never put that prediction in writing because I would have been wrong more often than not. But here's an indication the basic thought wasn't bad (via farmpolicy):

(In a related article regarding wheat, Reuters news reported yesterday that, “Russia faces a grain glut in 2009 as it prepares to harvest another bumper crop, putting domestic prices under pressure and overwhelming storage capacity already stretched by this year’s crop, the biggest in about 15 years…[F]armers in Russia, the world’s fifth-largest grain grower and exporter last year, have invested in new technology and land to increase their harvests and take advantage of booming world commodity prices that have since plummeted sharply.”)

There's also a discussion of transition discussions on ag there.

Clinton Is Out of Touch

When he became President, he admitted he didn't e-mail. It's not clear he's learned since. Certainly he doesn't keep up with grain prices on the Internet. See this bit from treehugger:

Speaking to a struggling food economy where grain prices have doubled and some food items in Haiti and Ethiopia are five hundred times greater than normal, Clinton said,

Food is not a commodity like others. We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.

Clue: corn was down to $3.80 the last I checked. (The link is to a UK scientist who in March predicted: "price rises in staples such as rice, maize and wheat would continue because of increased demand caused by population growth and increasing wealth in developing nations."

McKibben Versus GMU Economist

As a lead-in to a debate between Bill McKibben, a guru of local food, and a George Mason U economist (who seem to range between moderate conservative and very much so), Russell Roberts (actually I like Marginal Revolution), is interviewed by a Vermont paper.

The NY Times 27 Years Ago, and Agriculture Now

Here's an agriculture story from 1981, hat tip to Info Farm, the National Agricultural Library's blog, for alerting me to the NYTimes categorization of stories from its archive since 1981. It's a downbeat article, seeing the end of the green revolution:

"agricultural economists who specialize in world food production,[say] there will be no dramatic leaps in food yields. Meanwhile, the rate at which more food is produced actually has been declining - while the world's population is increasing by 70 million people each year. Worldwide, the margin between these two factors is discouragingly narrow. In Africa it has already disappeared and the increase in the amount of food grown each year, despite the gains from the green revolution, is less than the annual population increase."

It's because I remember such stories (and even worse ones from the 1950's) that I appreciate the accomplishments of industrial agriculture, which was able, over the next quarter century, to improve the average diets of the world's populace even though the population increased by 2 billion.

Potatoes

Elizabeth Rosenthal has an article on the potato as an answer to the question of how to feed the world. Because it's hard to store and transport, it's more or less a locavore food. No, I haven't done the figures, but potatoes are likely more distributed in growth than any grain and probably more than any vegetable.

Of course, as the Irish discovered 160 years ago, local isn't always better.

Frustrating Article on Russian Agriculture

Back in 1991, if I had been blogging, I would have predicted that grain prices would go through the floor because Russian agriculture would have flooded the market, finally having been freed of the constraints of the system. So much for my wisdom.

Today the NYTimes runs an interesting but frustrating article on Russian agriculture
from the beginning:

A decade after capitalism transformed Russian industry, an agricultural revolution is stirring the countryside, shaking up village life and sweeping aside the collective farms that resisted earlier reform efforts and remain the dominant form of agriculture.

The change is being driven by soaring global food prices (the price of wheat alone rose 77 percent last year) and a new reform allowing foreigners to own agricultural land. Together, they have created a land rush in rural Russia.

The article's frustrating because there's no real description of the current state of agriculture, just that big money people are buying land. There are two facts of interest: 16 percent cof Russia's arable land is idle, about 35 million hectares (maybe 80 million acres); and "[t]he average Russian grain yield is 1.85 tons a hectare — compared with 6.36 tons a hectare in the United States and 3.04 in Canada." That points to lots of potential (although if I recall my geography, Russia's closer to Canada in latitude than the U.S., albeit global warming is changing that.)