Survivalist Forum banner

U.S. crop boom not enough to rebuild thin supplies

10K views 54 replies 32 participants last post by  Rural Buckeye Guy 
#1 ·
Huge U.S. corn and soybean plantings this spring will likely fail to refill razor-thin stocks enough to quell the surge in grain prices, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday. In updated forecasts for the world's biggest crop exporter, the USDA warned that it could take several years to restore inventories to comfortable levels.




http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110224/bs_nm/us_usda_forum
 
#3 ·
True, but I have a work mate who runs his Toyota truck on vegetable oil and it doesn't cost him a penny.
He collects it from restaraunts for free, they normally have to pay to have it collected, and all he does is filter it and bingo...... free fuel.

I would love to do that.

On topic though, I know that various government agencies are predicting a famine on a world scale. Food is grown, enough food to feed the world but it is not grown in the right places so it doesn't get where it should.
 
#8 ·
While the last link shows a possibility of some alleviation of the concern, many don't even know the concern exist to begin with.

Lost on the back pages of news articles is the chinese wheat crop threat.
If the predictions for damage manifest, there will be a world wide shortage and huge price hikes. It will make the trouble in the middle east look like a kindergarden scrap.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Chinas-wheat-crop-at-risk-world-wary/articleshow/7490455.cms
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/asia/14china.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703313304576132042791632626.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-24/wheat-falls-for-second-day-in-johannesburg-as-rains-help-china-crop-growth.html
 
#9 ·
Huge U.S. corn and soybean plantings this spring will likely fail to refill razor-thin stocks enough to quell the surge in grain prices, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday. In updated forecasts for the world's biggest crop exporter, the USDA warned that it could take several years to restore inventories to comfortable levels.
Plantings arnt going to help at all, just ask the Aussie farmers who have been either flooded or hit by cyclones lol...

You need a huge harvest to boost inventories :)
 
#13 ·
The article makes it sound like the farmers just found alot of acreage they had never seen or used before.

What a load of garbage.

Farmers generally plant on planned rotation, the amount of farmland is fixed, and farmers make more harvesting a crop than not.

What happens when the Chinese offer more for our grain than we can? Do we starve as the grain goes to the high bidder? They certainly have a large enough stockpile of our dollars.
 
#15 ·
I'm curious. Exactly what would happen should the US decide to NOT donate wheat to starving countries overseas. What would happen if we kept ALL our wheat to replentish our inventories? Perhaps tell the OPEC countries that we will consider trading wheat for oil, though I realize that can't/won't happen.
 
#17 ·
These countries would....

-starve,

-prices may drop... pulling wheat out of the supply is an aid programs not only to starving people but insulate prices up and down generally for farmers benefit.

-Prices could skyrocket as other countries buy what wheat is available internationally or to donate to poor countries.


it's a complex mix of supply, demand and carry over stock rolled into one and called speculation
 
#16 ·
There's allot of rhetoric out there about food lets try to break some points up here and discuss them.


-Yes, speculation in the markets is driving the price up ultimately supply/demand & carry over stock is driving price. I don't think it's fair to have this argument without acknowledging that in the past speculation made food cheap and helped drive farming innovations. wheat is not only cheaper today per bushel than 500 years ago it's much more plentiful ! IMO...The breaking point isn't speculation and certainly speculation has made food production very successful enough so for the next point.


-Enough food to feed the world....maybe? Food aid hasn't helped the poor hungry nations feed themselves it's simply created more people dependent on food aid. Additionally, there's a population explosion happening in many of these poor countries that can't feed themselves many double, triple some even quadruple the fertility rates of developed countries.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_rate


-By 2030, world population is expected to hit 8.3 billion, standard of living is expected to push food consumption demand by 50 percent

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24942035/



-Among the many problems food production face one that isn't being talked much openly. The top grain producing countries China, India, USA & Russia right now,,.. Today! are farming at an unsustainable level to meet demand. Most aquifers used for irrigation in these countries are being used at an irreplaceable rate. In the USA the Ogallala aquifer( fossil aquifer) accounts for 27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States.

"For fossil aquifers—such as the vast U.S. , the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer—depletion brings pumping to an end. Farmers who lose their irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield dryland farming if rainfall permits. In more arid regions, however, such as in the southwestern United States or the Middle East, the loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture."


http://www.eoearth.org/article/Aquifer_depletion
 
#44 ·
Garden

I'm doubling the size of my garden,food prices may trigger a global SHTF event.Talked to our co-op they can't keep garden type seeds in stock,last year set a record for home gardening,this year will probably break that record!
That is a good idea, but how do you protect a garden? It could be raided and picked clean in one night. Best to add a good stock of freeze-dried vegetables. With the way things are going, I am thinking those will the vegetables I will be eating by the end of the year.
 
#25 ·
The USA may have plenty of wheat but it is doubtfull that many will be able to afford it!
Soon a lot of the world will be able to outbid american buyers! on wheat!
and by a decent margin!
By the time an export ban could be put into place it will be too late!!!!!
Hell it is too late now!
 
#26 ·
I dont entirely agree with this.

1 - Export bans have been used in the past, and get placed in time
2 - US is very much a food exporting nation
3 - They have the biggest military in the world, if they can be bothered blowing up countries to steal oil to keep their fuel price low, they can sure as heck be bothered to invade some sparsely populated food exporting country (Australia) to take their food :p

I dont see average Americans starving anytime soon solely due to a food shortage (combine it with something else, social breakdown, oil price shock etc, then its plausible)
 
#30 ·
Huge U.S. corn and soybean plantings this spring will likely fail to refill razor-thin stocks enough to quell the surge in grain prices, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday. In updated forecasts for the world's biggest crop exporter, the USDA warned that it could take several years to restore inventories to comfortable levels.




http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110224/bs_nm/us_usda_forum
Not just that with biden administration wants to put in carbon collecting pipeline and branches into like ten states destroying thousands to 100 of thousands of farm land they are sending out letters telling farmers they pay them very little and if dont they'll just take it
 
#31 ·
“The USA may have plenty of wheat but it is doubtfull that many will be able to afford it!
Soon a lot of the world will be able to outbid american buyers! on wheat!
and by a decent margin!
By the time an export ban could be put into place it will be too late!!!!!
Hell it is too late now!”

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Yea preps are important. But so is perspective. And that’s what I’m afraid many here lack. To some, the world is always falling apart and it’s always too late…
 
#33 ·
FYI; numbers from this fall


numbers appear to be lower than last year, but not critical.

we're still harvesting where I am so final number not done.
 
#50 · (Edited)
Got a related situation for the hivemind, OP, not highjacking your thread at all, just attaching a rider to it!

So I have a new project. Between planting the garden and bucking up blowdowns into rounds at my in-laws rural property, I am going to upgrade the security trip wires and move them around. Middays are hot and I'm kind of a wimp so I plan to spent time in thier polebarn spray painting those de-labled Progressive soup cans and drilling out holes in the bottom and one at the top. My wife loves that stuff and they are loud in trashbags and inside of trashcans, so I'm fishing them out of the recycles and collecting them now. I even have her bringing them home from work now. In the hot months its very common for me to be waiting out the heat of the day in a shadey place or fishing, so my activities raise no notice.

The quieter beer cans come off the wires this Spring and the much louder soup cans get wired on in thier place. Got that nice, freshly re-graveled driveway to get new rocks to put in them. They have almost a dozen wiener dogs in the house that create a roar barking but also point thier snouts in the direction of the noise.

SO, HERE I NEED SOME FEEDBACK FROM YOU GUYS. I hear that Amazon sells a decent green light night vision monochular for about 350, uses AA batteries. A co-worker also has rural property a ways south of Columbus, so we chat about the uniquer problems that situation brings. He says that it has a tiny red light, unlike a PSA-14 but he still wants something with a green field for inside his buildings for nightsight and to take out paperwasp nests. My concern is that that would be my uses too but I would want to periodically scope the property at night. Only a small section has security lights so physical size of the optic and range at night is an issue. 100-150 yards. Also, I need to check out the ring size of those flip up mounts for red dot magnifiers, ironically, for my own red dots. Eh. This is from a chat yesterday at work while we were getting ready for something next week, so, new.

Anyone have any feedback? Planned to be out there this morning but its raining. Thanks. OP, sorry but this is related.
 
#53 ·
Got a related situation for the hivemind, OP, not highjacking your thread at all, just attaching a rider to it!

So I have a new project. Between planting the garden and bucking up blowdowns into rounds at my in-laws rural property, I am going to upgrade the security trip wires and move them around. Middays are hot and I'm kind of a wimp so I plan to spent time in thier polebarn spray painting those de-labled Progressive soup cans and drilling out holes in the bottom and one at the top. My wife loves that stuff and they are loud in trashbags and inside of trashcans, so I'm fishing them out of the recycles and collecting them now. I even have her bringing them home from work now. In the hot months its very common for me to be waiting out the heat of the day in a shadey place or fishing, so my activities raise no notice.

The quieter beer cans come off the wires this Spring and the much louder soup cans get wired on in thier place. Got that nice, freshly re-graveled driveway to get new rocks to put in them. They have almost a dozen wiener dogs in the house that create a roar barking but also point thier snouts in the direction of the noise.

SO, HERE I NEED SOME FEEDBACK FROM YOU GUYS. I hear that Amazon sells a decent green light night vision monochular for about 350, uses AA batteries. A co-worker also has rural property a ways south of Columbus, so we chat about the uniquer problems that situation brings. He says that it has a tiny red light, unlike a PSA-14 but he still wants something with a green field for inside his buildings for nightsight and to take out paperwasp nests. My concern is that that would be my uses too but I would want to periodically scope the property at night. Only a small section has security lights so physical size of the optic and range at night is an issue. 100-150 yards. Also, I need to check out the ring size of those flip up mounts for red dot magnifiers, ironically, for my own red dots. Eh. This is from a chat yesterday at work while we were getting ready for something next week, so, new.

Anyone have any feedback? Planned to be out there this morning but its raining. Thanks. OP, sorry but this is related.
My brief look at night vision and thermal suggests that good quality rigs add a zero to your price range. This was aimed at night hunters, so maybe your $350 special would work to just scan a property. Will be very interested if it is a viable option.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rural Buckeye Guy
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top