Chemical Shortages Affecting U.S. Farms Described as ‘Off the Charts”
U.N. Secretary-General warns of ‘catastrophe’ from global food shortage.
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A disturbing report by Reuters, featuring interviews with more than a dozen chemical dealers, manufacturers, farmers, and weed specialists, indicates chemical shortages have disrupted U.S. growers’ production strategies and points to reduced harvests this season.
The level of shortages of farm-essential chemicals (e.g., fertilizer, weed-killer) is being described as “off the charts.”
Shawn Inman, owner of distributor Spinner Ag Incorporated in Zionsville, Indiana, said supplies are the tightest in his 24-year career.
“This is off the charts,” Inman said. “Everything was delayed, delayed, delayed.”
Shortages further reduce options for farmers battling weeds that developed resistance to glyphosate, the key ingredient in the commonly used Roundup herbicide, after decades of overuse in the United Sates.
Another farmer shares his experiences, demonstrating the level of science and forethought in planting fields. It also highlights another component of challenges to farms, which will end up contributing to inflation (and potential food scarcity): EPA over-regulation.
Tennessee farmer Jason Birdsong said he abandoned plans to plant soybeans on 100 acres after waiting months to receive Liberty he ordered from Nutrien Ag Solutions. He ultimately received less than half his order for 125 gallons and planted corn on the land instead. Birdsong said he is better able to control weeds in corn than soybeans.
Nutrien (NTR.TO) said numerous events stalled the supply chain during the pandemic and the company provided alternate solutions to customers.
Birdsong said he needed Liberty to fight weeds that are resistant to glyphosate in soy fields. He said he ruled out a third option, a dicamba-based herbicide from Bayer, because of extensive federal restrictions on when and where dicamba can be sprayed.
“With the dicamba technology being so strict, Liberty is the go-to,” Birdsong said.
The Environmental Protection Agency approved new restrictions on dicamba use this year in Iowa and Minnesota, two major farm states.
On the other hand, the US government has approved half a billion dollars for wheat farmers to help with grain shortages that have resulted from Russia’s attack on Ukraine. However, this expenditure may not mitigate all the challenges currently being faced.
Kansas wheat farmer Clay Schemm, who also serves as the President of the Wallace County Farm Bureau, joined “Morning in America” to discuss the obstacles farmers are working to overcome.
“Predominantly in our state, especially in the southwest areas, we’ve had extremely hot and dry temperatures. And with the wind just coming through and really increasing the loss of moisture, we’ve been seeing a lot of struggle to get the yield production that we would see on a typical year,” Schemm said.
A heat dome over the country has sent temperatures skyrocketing, drying out farmland and making it harder for farmers to produce crops.
“But trying to keep up with it when the yields aren’t there just makes for a struggle. I know farmers are doing their best to respond to this food shortage, but with the lifecycle of wheat, it’s hard for a lot of people to respond, and turnaround on a dime and change up those cropping practices,” Schemm said.
If American farmers are hurting, then the rest of the world will follow. The situation is so concerning that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the world faces a “catastrophe” because of the growing food shortage across the globe.
“There is a real risk that multiple famines will be declared in 2022,” he said in a video message to officials from dozens of rich and developing countries gathered in Berlin. “And 2023 could be even worse.”
Guterres noted that harvests across Asia, Africa and the Americas will take a hit as farmers around the world struggle to cope with rising fertilizer and energy prices.
“This year´s food access issues could become next year´s global food shortage,” he said. “No country will be immune to the social and economic repercussions of such a catastrophe.”
Hopefully, valuable lessons about shortening supply chains and strengthening domestic production will be learned and implemented before real food scarcity slams us.
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Comments
Just anyone could be President, just anyone could be Secretary of Transportation, just anyone could be Secretary of agriculture, just anyone could be Treasury Secretary …
Not just anyone could have f*cked everything up this badly.
Some might exchange could for would. There’s definitely growing belief out there that some of this is deliberate.
Yep. I really think they’re trying to kill us off. And we just sit here. I wish I was younger. No, wait, I wish I had been smarter when I was younger.
Too soon old, too late smart.
Fertilizer is the 5th Horseman of the. We are looking at Global Famine for years.
Some of this?
The “best”, the “brightest”, with “benefits” and forward-looking collateral damage.
“Hopefully, valuable lessons about shortening supply chains and strengthening domestic production will be learned and implemented before real food scarcity slams us.”
****
This seems to be a “positive feature” not a problem with the Globalists implementing the “Climate Change/Economic Reset”. A year ago, I would have thought such an opinion was nuts.
IIRC, at the recent G7, U.S., Canada, others(?), discouraged production of fertilizers in Africa, South Asia, etc. because it was energy and fossil fuel (Natural Gas) intensive and U.S. and Canada stopped plans to redirect bio-fuel resources to food production. Again would harm the energy reset. Read that current Corn production diverted to the Ethanol scam would help feed 150 million people. “Biden” up the damage by mandating increase from 10 to 15% Ethanol.
You don’t need fertilizer for solar farms. Heck you can’t even grow anything but mushrooms on the land they cover. They have appropriated the sunshine from plants!!
And they will save us all…… (repeat mantra, then bang head with stick).
These chemicals, and fertilizers, ultimately are dependent on the petrochemical industry which the current regime froze and partially shut down in the first hour of its existence. I have been talking about this in numerous forums.
Grain and vegetable farmers are deciding right now how large of a crop and of what they can afford to plant in the absence of or a shortage of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Or if they can afford to plant at all. We are living now off of the end of the last crop. Shortages are going to start popping up soon. They will be aggravated by the fuel and DEF shortages which will make transporting food and other goods either impossible or prohibitively expensive.
Animal farmers/ranchers are dependent on grain feeds to get their herds through the winter. If there is not enough food for people, there will not be enough for animal feed. Herds will be culled, and meat will be cheaper for a short time. Then it will be very, very expensive. It takes years to rebuild herds,
It IS going to get hungry out. The enemies of our country and Constitution are largely urban residents. The average city has a three day supply of food in stores and warehouses. Just-in-time supply chains were first invented for the food industry and not manufacturing. If the amount of supplies entering that chain decreases . . .
Being ready to care for those you love who are not enemies might be a good thing. As would stockpiling storable foods and fuels. It will get hungry out.
Subotai Bahadur
I’m not certain that the system could handle a large number of animals added into the system right now. Getting them from the farms / ranches would be an issue, getting them off the trailers into the processing facilities many of which are at capacity due to staffing issues then getting the processed meat out to the grocery warehouses in a timely manner could break the chain..
Another factor: age of farmers/ranchers.
I was good friends with a local rancher. He was third generation ranching in the area. During the last downturn–2008–he told me that the average age of ranchers in the US was 58. Young people don’t go into it. That number has to be mid-60’s by now.
The problem with selling off the herd is just what you cited–it takes years to rebuild it. You are 65-70; have gone through three of four of these bust/rebuild cycles. In your life, you may have had a dozen years that you made halfway decent money. Emphasis on “halfway”. You are old, tired and facing 5 years or so of rebuilding.
Much ranching in the West is done on marginal land. The Mom and Pop ranching operation knows how to wring a living off it of, most years. The big guys aren’t interested.
So-sell the ranch to a developer–or to some sort of greenie “trust”. Spend a few years fishing instead of wrangling large animals that can hurt you.
Gates will probably buy a lot of that forced-sale farmland.
Why give a good mushy crap about ranchers! Every city dweller knows that meat comes from the grocery store.
Everybody who can needs to have enough food for at least a few months to bridge supply chain issues. Most people around me have at least started the process of more food storage.
A little thought of living through food shortages is to gain about 10-15 pounds now. Not enough to really limit any activity, but enough to live through a serious injury or sickness or period of food scarcity.
Soylent Green time.
Add imposing sanctions on a Nation who provides large percentages of exported grain, fertilizer, oil, Nat gas, rare earth minerals and so on because that Nation is having a hot border dispute with another Nation.
Joe Biden himself, in a moment of honesty, told us there would be great pain and sacrifice for involving the US in Ukraine. Those who complain about the rising costs and consequences of US involvement should perhaps reconsider their support for US involvement in a border dispute that has zero bearing on our direct national security.
Many of us have tried to warn how bad this would be and little the sanctions would actually achieve other than harming the US. We aren’t even close to absorbing the total impacts that imposing these sanctions will continue to have on our Nation. Whatever criteria you use to measure Ukraine and US policy it is definitely not an America first, MAGA outcome.
” consequences of US involvement should perhaps reconsider their support for US involvement in a border dispute that has zero bearing on our direct national security.”
*****
Hold my Beer…You ain’t seen nothing yet!
“..the U.S. is moving troops from the 101st Airborne ‘screaming eagles’ into NATO allied countries on the western border of Ukraine.”
**
” Joe Biden has announced that six U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are being moved into the Mediterranean Sea to provide air defense missions and the ability to launch cruise missiles well inland into Russia ”
**
” Joe Biden is sending “two additional F-35 squadrons to the UK, and station additional air defense and other capabilities in Germany and in Italy.”
War emergency for the Midterm Election, anyone?
Remember what Obama said about Biden – “Never underestimate the ability of Joe to f things up”
I know a border dispute that has a direct bearing on our national security……
Look south, young man, look south.
Who could have known that shutting down an economy would have repercussions? right??? lol
When you start up sanctions to take several million bpd of oil off market the price rises. Same with fertilizer, grain, rare earth minerals, nat. gas and other critical items.
Couple the impact of sanctions with scant ability to increase supplies from elsewhere around the world because they are pretty much maxed out; Saudi or falling apart; Libya, Nigeria or also under sanction: Iran, Venezuela.
Add in the overt hostility to domestic production from draconian regulations, inability to secure finance or reluctance to make long-term investment in extraction of rare earth minerals, oil, gas, new green field refinery and pipelines because of uncertainty of return on investment; keystone.
In 2014 Team Obama asked banks to shift oil lending to Green Energy. In 7 years oil lending has fallen 54%. The shortage of natural gas caused the shortage of fossil fuel fertilizer.
In September we will know how bad this years global harvest is. Total farmed Calories will eventually drop 25%.
Chronic Starvation will go from 300 million to 1.5 billion. Every 5th person will starve.
Biden sure missed the point.
Stupid, especially stupid, and “I’m Irish, but I’m not stupid” Biden stupid.
I could have told you that last fall when farmers began putting orders for fertilizer and other chemicals. It was bad back then, and even worse now. Of course, “experts” will say they didn’t see the shortages coming, or didn’t see the inflation that came as the result of shortages.
Yeah, anybody that knows a farmer/rancher has seen this coming at least a year.
I guess someone found the Ark of the Covenant, and it wasn’t the good guys.
Well, we seem to be headed for a nuclear war, so maybe we won’t starve to death before we are vaporized
Check out Nuclear Secrecy, a site that has a nuclear explosion/fallout simulator.
Corn and soybeans are going in normally around me (Ohio).
Hmmm. I guess the folks in flyover country are important after all.
The US government had more than 2.2M acres in the Pay To Not Farm category when Biden assumed the presidency. One of his first acts was to put another 600K acres in the program.
We are strangling ourselves with left wing idiocy.
It didn’t have to be this way
It was intentional
Are we still paying farmers not to grow food? I don’t see why the government is interfering in agriculture (well, I guess I do – because they can) but with all parts of the food industry in constant contact with each other, they would be much better at providing their own forecasts and setting their own goals. I would prefer that food prices be unsubsidized so that we could at least know the true cost (assuming that tax money remained with us) and make our own adjustments.
I’ll probably eat those words, and at the rate we’re going, that’ll be all I’ll have to eat.
The Biden regime is de-incentivizing safety, security (food and otherwise) and the economy.
Just in time for Independence day.
Can we harvest the perpetual energy generated by our forefathers spinning in their graves?
It seems to be getting even better. Last years chlorine shortage from a. plant fire stands a good chance of being exacerbated by the EPA with new regulation on asbestos=based chlorine production, mercury-cell chlor-alkali sector, and PFAS usage. So a likely result is the inability of urban water treatment plants to purchase chlorine. Think boiling water advisories on a grand scale.
Biden truly believes that Government is the solution instead of the problem and he pursues that belief with a vengeance. That’s what 52 years of not having a job in the commercial sector buys you; when you’re a hammer every problem looks like a nail.