The President said that we’ll have Food Shortages, as a result of the Russian sanctions and ongoing supply chain issues.
Having seen shortages of toilet paper, sanitary wipes, flour and a host of other things over the past 2 years, how will these new shortages look?
Should we stock up on beans and rice? Water? Soft drinks?
Mods, put this in the category it fits, please.
It means the price of flour will go up in the US and there will be no flour at all in the countries that are both poor and import their grain.
The world’s top wheat exports break down like this:
So if we basically cut off the #1 producer and damage the #5 producer’s ability to export, that is a huge amount of wheat not on the market, and prices will rise accordingly. Something similar is happening for other commodities like barley, sunflower oil, etc… that are produced in Russia or Ukraine
Another consideration is that apparently a LOT of the components of fertilizers are exported by Russia, and now that they’re cut off, fertilizer prices are sky high as well. So that’s going to have an effect on prices for everything- both in pass-through cost of fertilizer, as well as potential lower yields due to some farmers using less fertilizer due to cost.
The US is the world leader in growing and exporting corn. My understanding is that corn is more valuable per acre than wheat but also requires more water/irrigation (which is why the eastern US does corn and wheat is more of a Great Plains and westward crop). I wonder what the circumstances would have to be to convert some corn production to wheat; how bad the wheat situation would need to be to make it worth it. Or maybe we’ll all just eat more corn meal products. More realistically, the price of wheat/flour will increase and sometimes you won’t find what you want on the shelf and will have to pick other food.
I feel like field corn is much more versatile than wheat – corn meal, animal feed, corn syrup, etc (sweet corn makes up a very small percentage) – but maybe that’s my Illinois blood speaking for me.
By invading Ukraine, I kind of feel Putin is like Dr Evil trying to hold the world hostage for $1 million, not understanding that his company legitimately makes billions every year.
The primary “shortages” will be in grain products, or anything made from grain, and some vegetable oils.
Russia has a similar profile: wheat, barley, sunflower products, soy beans and their products.
So… wheat, barley, and maize (corn) for sure. Also sunflower oil/meal, rapeseed oil which is also known as canola oil. So… bread, bread-like products cakes, cookies, pastries, etc. Also some cooking oils.
But it goes beyond the obvious - things like sunflower meal, soy, and grains are used to feel livestock, which means meat will get more expensive.
So… beans and rice are always good to have on hand, but we’re not likely to see shortages in those (absent panic buying). Softdrinks will march onwards much as before - some flavors may be missing but again, not dependent on the major exports of Ukraine and Russia.
You can stock up on things like bread, or flour, or cupcakes, or… well you can but you need to know how to store such things for a relatively longer period of time than usual. You can stash flour and bread in a freezer, but some of this stuff is bulky. Pasta products can be stored long term at room temperature but need to be in vermin-proof containers. Cooking oils should last fairly long at room temperature. Meat will need to be frozen for long term stocking up.
The US grows enough so that no one in the US will have to starve - although food will cost more. And there may be spot shortages from panic buying.
Learn to love fruit and vegetables more. Non-traditional grains like quinoa, sorghum, and millet may enjoy some popularity and may not increase in price (much) but they are unfamilar and not everyone will want to dabble in those.
The world population will all be chasing a smaller pile of stuff, which will raise prices. Affluent countries will be able to cope. The real tragedy is in poor countries where people might not be able to afford to eat, which could result in malnutrition or even real starvation and deaths.
Yeah, works for you… but corn intolerance and corn allergies aren’t uncommon and swapping out wheat with corn will make life hell for those folks. We can make sugar from beets (and do) and feed animals on all sorts of things. Actually, feeding animals like cows more on grass and less on corn might be better for both the cattle and for their ultimate consumers, us.
My comment was less “Eh, so who cares” and more tied to wondering when converting to wheat would be profitable enough to abandon corn. Namely that it wasn’t just trading one food grain for another but rather you had things like corn’s value for corn syrup and animal feed to weigh in.
From what I’ve read, the famous (infamous?) government subsidies to NOT grow food are expressly intended to prop up commodity grain prices worldwide, as US farmers could very easily flood the market and drop prices such that nobody makes money.
If that’s actually the case, then I’d expect to see those subsidies vanish like a fart in a hurricane before the next planting season. Or possibly be replaced with subsidies to grow specific crops like wheat in lieu of corn or something.
All the grains have multiple uses those - animal feed, most can be converted to a sweet syrup of some sort, etc.
Barley, for example, is a vital component of beer, can be baked into bread, eaten as a grain, feed to animal, and as malt/malted barley is used as a sweetening agent.
The top seven grains grown in the world, in order from most to least, are:
Corn is top because it does have a lot of uses, including conversion to sugar and oil as well as use as a grain, vegetable, and animal feed.
Wheat is next even though it’s mostly eaten by humans and not so much converted to other things. Ditto for rice. Although rice has its own production requirements and needs more water than other cereal crops.
The next two - barley and sorghum - are multiple use again, either as grains or conversion to sweetening agents. Barley is more suited to cooler climates, sorghum to warmer.
Oats and rye are back to mostly being eaten as grains/breads, with a minor role as animal feed.
Having a bit drop in wheat production is going to be very bad for some people and locations. Farmers can’t switch from one crop to another as quickly as non-farmers assume. Winter wheat, for example, needs to be planted and the end of summer/beginning of fall so it’s already too late to expand that crop this year in the Northern Hemisphere. It can’t be done until fall 2022. We can plant spring wheat this spring (of course) but different varieties of wheat have different end uses, and in general winter wheat yields more per unit of area than spring wheat.
Land that hasn’t been planted in awhile requires work to convert to a crop. Work usually done by petroleum powered machinery these days and fuel is also more expensive right now.
Then you have the usual crapshoot regarding weather any agriculture experiences. One benefit to global trade has been the ability to compensate for shortages in one part of the world with surpluses from another.
If farmers are able to take advantage of circumstances to plant more land and get more money they certainly will, but the window in which to do so this year is actually closing soon. Next year I’d expect production/marketing to adjust, but meanwhile people have got to eat something.
And planting season is pretty much right now in much of the US. If such decisions and incentives are to be made, they need to be made now.
Expect the price of a Big Mac to go up. All that bun…
Funny this question came up. I was actually wondering something unthinkable - what if that crazy ass mo-fo actually attacks us Stateside? Either air or actual ground? And we are suddenly turned into Kyiv. I live in Oakland, Bay Area. None of us have weeks of food, or an escape plan for something like this. There’s been a lot of earthquake preparedness (which I haven’t done, only thought about) and for many areas, rapid fire evacuation awareness, but not… war on our own soil.
ion
Maybe this quest should be its own thread.
Short of a nuclear strike (in which case, corn & wheat are the least of my problems), Putin has no way of projecting an attack into the mainland United States. He can’t even manage a successful attack on his much smaller next door neighbor and has taken significant man/material losses there.
I have trouble finding cat food by the cases that my cats like. That’s the shortage I’ve noticed most.
Quoted for truth – and to emphasize that last part.
People in the USA and other wealthy countries are unlikely to starve. Specific items may be available only intermittently or may disappear for some time. But even in such places, and most very definitely in the world as a whole, better pray (or atheist equivalent) for very good weather this year.
And, unfortunately, we’ve also screwed up the climate; and so are very unlikely to get it.
(I’ll also add that when “land hasn’t been planted in awhile” there’s often a very good reason: either that land isn’t productive, and/or it’s very hard to work, and/or there isn’t generally enough water available, and/or it’s providing habitat essential to something the demise of which is also likely to have nasty repurcussions for humans, as well as of course for that species and those which eat and/or are pollinated by it. And those which eat and/or are pollinated by those. And so on.)
I live in a 1 bedroom apartment. I have easily 1 week of water stored, two if I go to minimum rations. Several weeks of food for both me and my pets. It wouldn’t be a glamorous diet but it would keep us alive and functional. I do have a bottle of vitamin C tablets as well, since preserved food can be lacking in that nutrient and it’s sort of important. You can have that sort of back up if you actually desire it.
Escape plans? Um… working on that. Or rather, revising that. But then, I’m on the edge of rural territory I have a much better chance of fleeing than inner city people. And I’m not afraid of back roads.
Then the price of wheat will be the least of our worries.
True, that.
The only way they have to actually project any sort of force would be strategic weapons of some sort- one of the legs of the “triad” - ICBMs, SLBMs or bombers.
ANY of those would be the ultimate escalation- there’s nowhere to escalate past that, as that means full strategic level nuclear war.
And even if through some master stroke of deception, managed to land some troops on some coast of the US, they’d have to reckon with the bulk of the Army (~1,000,000 strong), the Marine Corps (~180k), the Air Force (5800 aircraft), and somehow get past all 300-ish deployable Navy ships.
The entire Russian Ground Forces and Airborne Forces combined are about 325k, and a lot of that is tied up in Ukraine already.
Great post. I just want to add that a lot of corn acreage goes to ethanol production for fuel.