'I'm afraid we're going to have a food crisis': The energy crunch has made fertilizer too expensive

[NickB79]

Source: Yahoo Finance

The world is facing the prospect of a dramatic shortfall in food production as rising energy prices cascade through global agriculture, the CEO of Norwegian fertilizer giant Yara International says.

"I want to say this loud and clear right now, that we risk a very low crop in the next harvest," said Svein Tore Holsether, the CEO and president of the Oslo-based company. "I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis."

Speaking to Fortune on the sidelines of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Holsether said that the sharp rise in energy prices this summer and autumn had already resulted in fertilizer prices roughly tripling.

Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/going-food-crisis-energy-crunch-090255366.html

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Eat less. Don't throw so much away. I worry a lot more about...

subsistance farmers without water.

First it's Nigeria and South America. Then it's us.

[OneCrazyDiamond]

24. +1000

Been doing that for years. We save a fortune on food costs.

[Ford_Prefect]

2. Welcome to the new post-warmed world.

[Tetrachloride]

3. Radishes, spinach , tomatoes, cukes, string beans

can be grown in
certain levels of temperature if protected from
frost by plastic clear tarps.

Ask your neighbors.

[PortTack]

7. Absolutely...root veggies, squash and other winter vegetables are easy to grow and store a long time

Eat with the seasons. If a particular grocery item is expensive, don’t buy it, choose something else.
We as the consumer forget we have all the power! If you refuse to buy expensive items and they don’t sell, guess what, the grocer puts them on sale and orders less the next time for the shelves.

Check out your local health food store. The prices there may not sky rocket as much since they use local growers.

There is no shortage of oil, this is pure greed on the part of big oil and the saudis.

[cstanleytech]

4. Most hard hit will be the developing countries.

[NickB79]

5. And that will cause waves of refugees to flee to developed nations

Feeding the xenophobic right-wing politicians in their quest for power.

[Champp]

6. Tough news for the ag-chem and ag-gmo industrial food titans

Maybe they will snap out of their greed-fueled industrial gmo-chem "food" production systems, which contribute to climate chaos, and GO ORGANIC.

For crying out loud. They've known the truth for decades, but keep on making toxic crap and inserting into the food chain.

[PortTack]

8. This!

[NickB79]

10. Synthetic fertilizer has been the norm for 70 years

My grandfather was using in on his farm in the 1950's.

It and the associated Green Revolution of hybrid seeds are the entire reason the Population Bomb fear of the 70's never came to pass, with the associated global starvation it would have caused. You don't grow 250 bushels per acre with heirloom corn seed and cow manure. And conventional hybrid crops need synthetic fertilizer just as badly as GMO ones. If GMO crops didn't exist, we'd be facing the same crisis.

The path to a world that doesn't rely on synthetic fertilizer and hybrid crops requires one of two things: either a near-global conversation to a vegetarian lifestyle in the next decade or two, or the removal of a few billion human beings. You have to choose one to go to an organic food system.

[Farmer-Rick]

29. If you can't grow crops because of the supposed fertilizer shortage

How would converting to a a vegetarian lifestyle work exactly? If you can't grow vegetation, you can't feed vegetarians.

I have rarely if ever used purchased fertilizer. The animals I raise provide more than enough fertilizer with plenty of nitrogen coming from chickens. The huge corporate farms use synthetic fertilizer because it's easier to amass and easier to distribute. It use to be cheaper too what with the cost of processing animal manures. Not sure synthetic fertilizers are cheaper now.

But petroleum based chemical fertilizers are not sustainable. They produce so many nutrients that plants are unable to absorb them all and they wash away into rivers, streams and the ocean causing toxic algae blooms.

If we are running out of synthetic fertilizers, we have no choice but to switch to animal manures or human. Do we have a 3rd choice I haven't heard of?

Yeah animal manures can be difficult to use especially for huge corporate farms. But for the smaller farms it can be a sustainable system with little to no degredation of the land and wildlife. Maybe what we really need is to convert to more small farms and not focus on export of carb heavy grains.

[NickB79]

33. What do your chickens and livestock eat?

If you feed them significant amounts of commercial feed, you ARE using chemical fertilizer, it's just been cycled thru the crops used to grow the corn and soy on the megafarms the feed is made from. And when a large farm is burning thru tons of commercial feed per month, that adds up to a lot of nitrogen originally derived from fossil fuels. The only way it's truly sustainable is if you're growing your own feed to feed your livestock in a near-closed system.

As to your first question, it's well established that you can generate several times more calories per acre by feeding crops directly to humans vs cycling them through livestock into meat, eggs and milk with the associated caloric losses. And the more calories you can generate per acre, the fewer acres you need to fertilize. Thus, you conserve limited fertilizer supplies. Some caveats apply, obviously, such as ranching livestock on land unsuitable for crop production (the Plains States like North Dakota come to mind).

Your suggestion of the use of humanure isn't a bad one, given the vast amounts of organic matter lost every year in developed nations. It's likely something that will be necessary in the near future. However, we've been seeing issues lately with chemical contamination in sewage-derived fertilizer, such as "forever chemicals" like PFAS's.

Ultimately, the issue is that we have several billion humans more than the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet.

[Farmer-Rick]

37. No, almost all the feed my animals get is off the farm

They are mostly free range, pasture raised and I supplement with fodder beets and sweet potatoes. My chickens rarely need extra food aside from what they find in the fields. When they do need more, I give them kitchen scraps and let them into my gardens to eat what I haven't harvested.

I found that if I let the sheep into my sweet potato fields, they will even dig up the potatoes for me.

But I stopped most of my farming now. It was a fun experiment trying to get the most out what little I had. Animal manures were a game changer for me. And looking outside the conventional farming methods for sustainable methods was just an amazingly easy thing to do. There are just so many ways you can create food without chemicals and locking up animals in cages or barns. Really it wasn't all that difficult if you aim for a more natural way of farming. In fact it was so amazingly easy, I don't know why everybody doesn't do it.

It seems that every single developed country has an ageing population, which really means a declining birth rate. Where you don't see declining birth rates is in poverty stricken underdeveloped countries usually ruled by right wing dictators. So if women are allowed to have control over their own wombs, and aren't manipulated by religions to have too many children, they will reduce the population. That and pandemics and global warming should pretty much control the numbers of people.

Yeah, I know going from vegetables to humans produces more calories than going threw animals but humans can't eat grass. And most everywhere you look humans are cultivating grass. Can you imagine sheep in suburbia keeping down the grass? Then you have both food and a lawn.

[womanofthehills]

49. My chicken manure is the only fertilizer I use in my vegetable garden (plus compost)

People are blown away at how big my plants are. I buy organic grains for my chickens plus I feed them organic vegs that I buy and grow. Lots of people are now selling bags of their organic chicken manure online. I might have to branch out.

My chickens are just for eggs and manure, but, when I buy chicken to eat, I only buy organic free range chicken. Agree, locking animals in cages is so gross to me and the chickens can not be healthy to eat with all the GMO and glyphosate loaded chicken food. Free range chickens taste so much better and have way way less fat in the skin. Actually, the skin is thinner.

Same with beef. I refuse to eat beef that is not free range. Luckily, I live in ranching country and a woman in my bookclub sells her free range/not corn finished beef to us all.

I grow greens and mini tomatoes in my south windows all winter long.

[Farmer-Rick]

55. Isn't it amazing how easily converting to natural humane

Methods of farming actually reduces work and increases profits because you are not constantly buying stuff to run your farm.

And you can produce so much food with less work.

[NickB79]

34. E.O. Wilson has done some work on this

https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html

One such scientist, the eminent Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth's available resources. As Wilson pointed out in his book "The Future of Life" (Knopf, 2002), "The constraints of the biosphere are fixed."

Aside from the limited availability of freshwater, there are indeed constraints on the amount of food that Earth can produce, just as Malthus argued more than 200 years ago. Even in the case of maximum efficiency, in which all the grains grown are dedicated to feeding humans (instead of livestock, which is an inefficient way to convert plant energy into food energy), there's still a limit to how far the available quantities can stretch. "If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people," Wilson wrote.

The 3.5 billion acres would produce approximately 2 billion tons of grains annually, he explained. That's enough to feed 10 billion vegetarians, but would only feed 2.5 billion U.S. omnivores, because so much vegetation is dedicated to livestock and poultry in the United States.

Note that we're only a couple decades from this theoretical maximum, but this assumes ALL currently available cropland remains in use for the foreseeable future. In actuality, we're losing vast amounts of cropland annually to climate change and soil erosion, when we need to be reducing farmland for reforestion to sequester carbon. We're also nowhere close to adapting this vegetarian lifestyle.

[Farmer-Rick]

39. Populations are decreasing dramatically

"Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century.

And 23 nations - including Spain and Japan - are expected to see their populations halve by 2100.

Countries will also age dramatically, with as many people turning 80 as there are being born."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521.amp

"Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/world/global-population-shrinking.amp.html

Here's the thing. Capitalism requires constant labor growth.
Overpopulation is what capitalism needs to keep wages low and labor abundant.

When a country has reached its peek population growth, causing labor shortages and higher wages, capitalist have routinely imported labor with immigration. But then immigration is could not be supported, outsourcing jobs to foreign countries where populations are still growing was the next step.

But now we realize how easily that supply rubber band can break, and that some countries are experiencing infertility and lower population where they had none before, it seems capitalist have run out of cheap labor.

[dixiegrrrrl]

60. That is assuming cooperating weather.n/t

[csziggy]

41. Longer than that - my grandfather was hired by Swift & Co. to run a phosphate mine in 1925

Phosphate had already been mined in Central Florida for at least fifty years by then. In the late 1970s my Dad made his money by selling a piece of land that was the last big deposit of phosphate within the reach of three different phosphate processing plants. Now most of the phosphate in Central Florida is gone and the most significant deposits are in Morocco, Brazil, and Peru.

[womanofthehills]

46. Cuba was not able to get fertilizer for yrs so they went organic & developed other methods

He wasn’t using Roundup on his farm in the 50’s. With all the Roundup cancer trials, this is a good thing. Many countries have banned GMO crops and they are doing fine.

[bucolic_frolic]

13. Yay Organic! Less food, more nutrients!

No one believed me after I read it in the 90s, but compare the flavor and satiety!

[ProfessorGAC]

15. Most Ag-Chem Fertilizers Are...

...simple water soluble salts, providing nitrogen, phosphorus & potassium to the soil.
There is nothing inherently toxic in ammonium nitrate, ammonium phosphate, or potassium nitrate.
I think you may be conflating fertilizer with weed & vegetation killers.
Gigantic chemical differences.

[NutmegYankee]

36. +1

[LeftInTX]

52. Aren't that made from petrochemicals?

Aren't coated ureas made from petrochemicals?

[womanofthehills]

57. Weed killers are also effected - will be enough Roundup for initial applications

But not for the rest of season.

[ProfessorGAC]

59. Perhaps True

Good point, but I was addressing only the claim that fertilizers used in At are toxic.
Your example of RoundUp points to my statement that those are indeed toxic, but they're not fertilizers.
I was concerned that the poster to whom I replied was comparing apples to oranges.
I'm not convinced that these products are supply affected by energy costs, though.
I've been to sites that make both and the processes are as different as are building a car & baking a cake.

[paleotn]

22. Can't feed 8 billion people.

on compost and heirloom varieties. I get what you're saying about conventional ag contributing to climate change. I do, but unless we're going to drastically depopulate the planet conventional ag has to play a part. Thus, the conundrum....who gets voted off the planet? You chose.

[Farmer-Rick]

32. Says who?

We have plenty of food for everyone. What we don't have is a fair and equitable system of distributing that food. The waste from average grocery stores, restaurants and overfilled American fridges could feed millions. We sustain a huge population of rats in cities, dumps and landfills thanks to all that waste.

Capitalism is the most inefficient, lopsided and unfair system for the distribution of anything. We have millions of homeless yet Zillow has a huge backlog of homes they can't sell. There are cars sitting in dealerships when thousands need better transportation. It's no different with how the stumbling broken marketplace distributes food. The food is there, it's just not getting to the right people who need it.

As a farmer, I had so much food no one bought. I either gave it to the food bank or composted it. But I could have easily fed 30 families throughout the year. Even in winter I could produce carrots, cabbages, strawberries (a new system developed by our local university) gourmet mushrooms, kale, chicken, eggs, lamb just to name a few. The problem was I had no where to sell it. Corporate farms have taken all the markets.... grocery stores, schools, hospitals and other institutions. The only place left for me to sell, if I don't want pennies from wholesalers, is farmer's markets or my own roadside stand. So, I just cut back a lot. Talk about a broken distribution system.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

38. And as an alternative, you propose ...?

Capitalism is the most inefficient, lopsided and unfair system for the distribution of anything.

The only place left for me to sell, if I don't want pennies from wholesalers, is farmer's markets or my own roadside stand. So, I just cut back a lot. Talk about a broken distribution system.

In other words, you became a {fill in the blank}.

[Farmer-Rick]

40. We should take control of the economy and do some planning

Really, plan our markets, plan where and how to farm. Pay farmers a salary to grow and raise food so they don't have to be at the mercy of fickled markets.

We pay law makers to govern, why not pay farmers to farm. Good knows farmers produce less crap then many senators.

We pay teachers to teach and police to abuse us. Why not put farmers on the payroll and get them to produce organic food for everyone?

We just need to take control and organize it instead of paying corporations to export grains to foreign countries. Instead of standing back and watching our dairy farms disappear so that we have to import milk, take control of the situation and plan it and organize it.

The money's there it's just going to the rich corporations now, who mostly grow grains because of profit.

[paleotn]

54. And al that food and wasted food is generated by..........

for the most part, a conventional food production system. Don't get me wrong, I think there's a place for small, organic farmers. I live in a place surrounded by them. But, we're not going to feed 8 going on 9 BILLION people that way. The scale and efficiencies simply aren't there.

[NurseJackie]

9. It would be even worse without GMO crops.

[NullTuples]

11. How so, please?

Are there specific examples of genetic modifications that enable plants to be just as productive* without as much fertilizer?

*including nutritional value

[NurseJackie]

21. Yes. And disease resistant, too. Also drought tolerant.

Look it up. Anyone with an internet connection can read all about it. GMO is not the big boogey-man that it's made out to be.

[paleotn]

23. Thank you! +1000

[NullTuples]

30. Found it, or rather them - looks like the first was rice, over 10 yrs ago

"The modified plants contained more carbon, amino acids and about 30 percent more nitrogen than control plants did."

[Farmer-Rick]

31. Only corporations don't promote those benefits in crops

They are in it for the money, lots and lots of money.

Where are the amazing almost water free plants? Where are the seeds that grow plants with double the harvests? Disease resistance can be created with hybrids or merely good breeding. You don't need GMOs for that. But if you got to use GMOs, start spitting out those amazing seeds. I'll buy them.

But they are few and far between because corporations only want to make profits.

If for example the corporation develops a tomato plant that produce 50 percent more tomatoes, how does that help them sell seeds? One plant, a handful of seeds is all you need. No more. It doesn't help the corporations sell seeds.

But if you sell seeds that have to have synthetic fertilizer, or chemical insecticides, or antifungal sprays AND you sell fertilizers, insecticides and sprays, you just made 3 or 4 sales.

So, you are not likely to see GMO seeds commonly available with useful properties to the common person without the need for excessive fertilizers and chemicals. Not unless you get corporations out of the business of selling chemicals and seeds.

[Ursus Rex]

62. Nicely-put.

There are problems, and there are solutions, but solving problems isn't where the most money is.

[womanofthehills]

47. Many countries think it's a big boogey-man and have banned GMO's

Countries Where GMOs are Banned

In the European Union, a European Commission rule was passed that gave countries in the European Union the option to opt-out of growing genetically modified crops. According to the Commission’s website, nineteen out of the 27 member state countries of the EU have voted to either partially or fully ban GMOs. The Commission reports “several countries such as France, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Poland, Denmark, Malta, Slovenia, Italy and Croatia have chosen a total ban. Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium has opted out, as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

Around the world, countries continue to debate GMO use. In 2016, Russia imposed a full ban on growing or producing food using genetically modified plants or animals. This resulted from a 10-year moratorium placed on GMOs in 2013 so more experiments, tests and new methods of research could be developed. According to The Vice President of the National Association for Genetic Safety, Irina Ermakova at the time of the moratorium, “Biotechnologies certainly should be developed but GMOs should be stopped. (We) should stop it from spreading.”

Also banning GMOs are Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Bhutan and Saudi Arabia in Asia; and Belize, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela in the Americas. Only four out of 47 countries in Africa have made it legal to plant any GMO crops at all: South Africa, Burkina Faso, Sudan and Nigeria.

Some countries that have not banned GMOs have restrictions on them, or have a temporary ban until more research is done. According to Zimbabwe’s policy on GMO foods outlined in the article, “No to GMOs, Position Unchanged,” the country will continue to ban GMOs until there is more evidence. As of now, the country prohibits the production of GMOs.
https://gmowatch.com/where-are-gmos-banned/

[bucolic_frolic]

12. The latest occupation revealed: Pooper Scooper

Cow herds shrinking as we shed beef for health and climate. So no cow manure.

I'm expecting a market for deer manure. Glean the woods!

[rzemanfl]

14. There are so many people in this country who are so full of shit.

Put them in camps and follow the Milorganite model. They can watch Faux News all day and Drumpf can live in one of them as the shitter in chief.

[monkeyman1]

35. not to worry ,plenty of manure come's out of Congress every damn day !!!!

crap ,forgot about the media !

[womanofthehills]

50. Lots of cow manure out here in NM

A neighbors cows got into my yard for about 20 minutes before I realized it. I never knew that 5 cows could shit that much in such a short time.

[The Mouth]

16. Don't worry

The CEOs of these companies won't miss a single stock distribution or bonus.

[marie999]

17. I'm afraid we're going to have a food crisis.".

I think the 821 million people in the world that do not have enough to eat are already having a food crisis. I watched a movie yesterday on YouTube called HOME (JUNE 5,2009). If you really want to be depressed and learn something watch it. It is about climate change and overpopulation. I believe there isn't any real answer to climate change until our population decreases significantly.

[CloudWatcher]

19. Every day: 25,000 dead from lack of food.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214000294

https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year/story

[madville]

56. There is no worldwide shortage of food, it's logistical

In many areas there is no way to distribute food assistance to the hungry, either due to war or the crooked governments in those countries taking the food and reselling it. Current world hunger is not due to a food shortage though.

[CloudWatcher]

18. Good news for coral reefs?

Isn't fertilizer runoff one of the major things killing our oceans?

I'm no expert ... just wondering.

[womanofthehills]

48. Roundup on the Florida sugar cane is causing algae

And red tides. Yuck!

[LeftInTX]

53. Organic fertilizer is actually worse for runoff...

Organic requires much more product...
Synthetics are more soluble and are more likely to go directly to the soil and have rapid update by plants.

BTW: One of the worst things that runoff mistakes that homeowners do? Allow large amounts of leaves to pile up on curbs. When it rains those leaves get into the watershed. The dead leaves are fairly high in phosphorus, which is a known water pollutant. Don't get me started on the crap that comes off of my roof every time it rains! (Asphalt)

[womanofthehills]

58. I doubt if leaves are causing toxic red tides & killing all the fish

Is Monsanto's Glyphosate Connected to Red Tide and Marine Life Losses?


https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/red-tide

[lonely bird]

20. Food crisis? No.

At least not yet.

Access and payment crisis? Yes. Financialization and commodification have killed, are killing and will continue to kill people.

First things to realize:

There is no such thing as a free market and “the market” decides nothing as it lacks a brain.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

43. The free market is expedient

It always seeks the highest return on the lowest investment. It does not look at other external factors unless acted upon (read: regulated).

[VGNonly]

25. 10 to 1

It takes 10 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat.

[Wolf Frankula]

26. We can use bs

As long as we have Dumbold tRump we have all the bullshit we need.

Wolf

[Mawspam2]

27. Midwest silos are still full of grains from when...

...TFG started trade wars with China. Less fertilizer means less polluted runoff in our creeks and rivers.

[in2herbs]

28. Why not change farming practices??? Warren Buffet's son is a farmer who is

practicing the more organic way of farming and using less fertilizer. His method is at odds with the farming methods Bill Gates' funds.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

42. They aren't saying fertilizer will be in short supply

They are saying the cost of the inputs are rising. Certainly one option is not to plant. Another is to plant on the assumption market prices will raise prices. A third option is to find alternative fertilizer.

[womanofthehills]

51. They are saying what might also be in short supply - plastic containers for fertilier

[dalton99a]

45. Kick

[radicalleft]

61. Oh great...

more ammo for the futures traders to fuck us over with...