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Post by atash on Dec 7, 2012 15:52:18 GMT -5
Good points, David. 6) It's completely normal for commodity prices to run counter to real changes in supply-demand dynamics at least over a relatively short term (could be years, though, beware...) because there is a disconnect to the physical commodities; even if you "take delivery" all you get is a receipt for storage expenses for grain you DON'T really have physical possession of. The idea is that everything is settled in cash so you just go buy some grain, but the disconnect creates possibilities of reality gaps. The longer the term that you look at the trend, the less likely those gaps persist, so that eventually the commodity prices reflect some degree of reality. You'll notice a lot of anomalies like gap-ups/gap-downs where someone is cheating, especially around contract expirations, and you'll notice anomalies between spot prices and street prices in metals, but over longer terms, they can't let the system get too far away from reality or people would lose faith in it. That would be bad for the casino. David, have you investigated the possibility of hedging your bets with some grain sorghum? At least on an experimental basis? Better to try it than to risk a whole crop of corn, and having that fail catastrophically. Ironically, I don't have to worry about drought. I'll get SOMETHING. Fully ripe and nicely dried down, maybe not. Carol Deppe and I have had that exact conversation offline. She thinks you should always be ready for hard times and contingencies as a matter of prudent planning, which I agree with as a matter of principle; I happen to anticipate specific long-term problems brewing, the weather of which is one of the least of our worries. Food production has peaked and so has petroleum production, but population is still growing and even if it weren't, we'd still have problems due to declining productivity of the population we did have. Those are "inflection points". It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end.  |
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Post by MikeH on Dec 7, 2012 16:29:09 GMT -5
Thanks, Steev. I have been surprised how entering the third year of drought messes with your mind. I was certain that we would get our fall rains. But nothing. The ground is as hard as a rock. The worst for me has been the high winds (many days have 20 to 30 mph winds) causing dirty air that causes breathing problems. But on a positive note, my garden porn addiction has been broken. I literally have not spent over 30 seconds with the new seed catalogs this year. I think I have a sense of what you are saying about how it messes with your mind. We had nothing like what you had but it was hard to deal with nonetheless. It was as if we had no compass. Switch grass, a native perennial, started setting seed at the end of June instead of the end of October. Earthworms were nowhere to be seen, they must have followed the receding water table. Tomato plants stopped growing by the end of June and produced no fruit. Despite having 4000 litres in rainbarrels, we couldn't keep up with watering. To give each plant that needed water the kind of deep watering that only a good rain can provide wasn't possible because there weren't enough hours in the day. Our bees did not produce much brood and the hive did not increase its size over the summer. Nor did they produce much comb. When the drought broke, they seemed to be in a frenzy to capture the goldenrod and aster last burst before winter. On balance, I would describe the summer as being not fun. We felt that we were under siege. Even when the rain came, it didn't seem to end. We had flowers on our haskap in September. That wasn't too big a deal since we had a few last year as well. But there were a lot more this year and they produced 3/8" green berries. Some of our apples were on the verge of bud break. Our lilacs did break bud with purple flowers starting to show. Just when I thought that our compass was settling down it turned out to be borrowed from Captain Jack of the Black Pearl. My theory is that Nature is sending us a message: Mess with me and I'll mess with you. Attachments:
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Post by MikeH on Dec 7, 2012 16:42:44 GMT -5
Today, I would like to challenge each of you to think about what MikeH calls "the perfect storm of global crop failures". Nice chart reading. I used to read the same tea leaves and put money down. I'll add a bit to the perfect storm. Corn contracts get bought and sold from the first day of the contract to the last. On the last day, the seller on that date is contractually obligated to deliver to the buyer on that date. What if he has no corn to deliver?  ?? Let's say the buyer is HighFructose Inc. which means it could be a LARGE number of contracts. What if none of the total outstanding contracts can be delivered? Do things get interesting quickly in financial markets? What if a player has a capitalization problem? Does contagion become a problem? Lots of questions because we've never had a crop failure that caused non-delivery of futures contracts. |
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Post by davida on Dec 7, 2012 17:56:36 GMT -5
David, have you investigated the possibility of hedging your bets with some grain sorghum? At least on an experimental basis? Better to try it than to risk a whole crop of corn, and having that fail catastrophically. Ironically, I don't have to worry about drought. I'll get SOMETHING. Fully ripe and nicely dried down, maybe not. Carol Deppe and I have had that exact conversation offline. She thinks you should always be ready for hard times and contingencies as a matter of prudent planning, which I agree with as a matter of principle; I happen to anticipate specific long-term problems brewing, the weather of which is one of the least of our worries. Food production has peaked and so has petroleum production, but population is still growing and even if it weren't, we'd still have problems due to declining productivity of the population we did have. Those are "inflection points". It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end. Excellent food for thought, Atash. Thank you for mentioning grain sorghum. I had not given it consideration but will definitely look into growing it. This is the kind of help that we need from each other to learn to survive these changing times. |
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Post by davida on Dec 7, 2012 19:26:59 GMT -5
Today, I would like to challenge each of you to think about what MikeH calls "the perfect storm of global crop failures". Nice chart reading. I used to read the same tea leaves and put money down. I'll add a bit to the perfect storm. Corn contracts get bought and sold from the first day of the contract to the last. On the last day, the seller on that date is contractually obligated to deliver to the buyer on that date. What if he has no corn to deliver? ?? Let's say the buyer is HighFructose Inc. which means it could be a LARGE number of contracts. What if none of the total outstanding contracts can be delivered? Do things get interesting quickly in financial markets? What if a player has a capitalization problem? Does contagion become a problem? Lots of questions because we've never had a crop failure that caused non-delivery of futures contracts. I kinda figured that you had made a few (thousand) future trades. I find yesterday' s tea leaves easier to read than today's.  We experienced a situtation this year that could make non-delivery possible. We had a week of highs ranging from 114F to 117F with 25mph to 35mph winds. It literally drained the life out of everything. An entire harvest that looked good until this point could have been lost and the price would have gone wild. In my situation, my most beloved crops were Joseph's Frosty corn (it was finished by this heat wave), Holly's Italian Beans and Dr. Kapular's yacon. I decided to keep these alive by watering several hours per day. The beans stayed alive but never yielded a single bean, even in the fall. The yacon looked good for awhile but then started dying stem by stem. It did not yield any roots and not even a crown to replant. |
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Post by davida on Dec 7, 2012 20:05:21 GMT -5
I think I have a sense of what you are saying about how it messes with your mind. We had nothing like what you had but it was hard to deal with nonetheless. It was as if we had no compass. Switch grass, a native perennial, started setting seed at the end of June instead of the end of October. Earthworms were nowhere to be seen, they must have followed the receding water table. Tomato plants stopped growing by the end of June and produced no fruit. Despite having 4000 litres in rainbarrels, we couldn't keep up with watering. To give each plant that needed water the kind of deep watering that only a good rain can provide wasn't possible because there weren't enough hours in the day. Our bees did not produce much brood and the hive did not increase its size over the summer. Nor did they produce much comb. When the drought broke, they seemed to be in a frenzy to capture the goldenrod and aster last burst before winter. On balance, I would describe the summer as being not fun. We felt that we were under siege. Even when the rain came, it didn't seem to end. We had flowers on our haskap in September. That wasn't too big a deal since we had a few last year as well. But there were a lot more this year and they produced 3/8" green berries. Some of our apples were on the verge of bud break. Our lilacs did break bud with purple flowers starting to show. Just when I thought that our compass was settling down it turned out to be borrowed from Captain Jack of the Black Pearl. My theory is that Nature is sending us a message: Mess with me and I'll mess with you. Thanks for letting me know that you understand. It is fun to see the pictures of everyone successes on the forum but sometime it helps to know that someone feels your pain. Mother Nature had one last laugh on me this year. I finally decided that I had to have a hoop house. I could not get my summer crops in the ground early enough to beat the present weather pattern's heat because of tornado season. We do not usually get tornados every year but will get a late spring storm with heavy winds and hail. And I especially wanted fall crops to give us three growing seasons to produce the food for our family. So we purchased the hoop house and was so thrilled to have it ready for the fall crops. I had given considerable effort to have all the transplants ready for when the heat subsided enough to plant. Finally the weather forecast was perfect and we were planting on Saturday morning with help from the family. The cool front moved in Friday afternoon with wind gusts to 80 mph and substained winds of 40 to 60mph. The hoop house top ripped with the gusts and the substained winds removed the top completely. All the transplants were safe in the garage with no place to go. By this time, we just did not have the energy to scurry around to find a new top and replace it. Mother Nature wins the last battle in 2012. We did win the battles with potatoes, onions, Holly's peas, spring greens, bush green beans, one crop of tomatoes, peppers and apples. But Mother Nature definitely won more battles and the war in 2012 but she was kind enough to teach us some lessons on how to do things better in the future. For one, the new hoop house top will have tie-downs with rachets. |
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Post by atash on Dec 11, 2012 19:20:38 GMT -5
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Post by steev on Dec 11, 2012 20:36:13 GMT -5
Ironic that Egypt, which was the breadbasket of Roman wheat, is now the highest wheat importer.
The point of rioting is that it facilitates governmental scooping up of raw material for soylent green.
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Post by castanea on Dec 11, 2012 21:22:32 GMT -5
Why indeed? And why suggest that it's inevitable? |
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Post by steev on Dec 12, 2012 0:24:12 GMT -5
Be afraid; be very afraid. Ravenous hordes are going to get you, probably un-white ravenous hordes. Booga, booga. Don't demand your taxes be spent to promote the general welfare; give them to the military-industrial complex; they'll protect you!
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Post by mountaindweller on Dec 12, 2012 2:59:38 GMT -5
The charts are scary. From 2008 food simply skyrocketed. The only thing which might calm the mind a bit is that the dollar value plunged meanwhile too, meaning that you eat less for your paper currency.
I have only two hands and despite working every day in our garden I never manage to catch up or do things at time. My husband is not a gardener at all, helps with some hard work and runs off into the chicken house because plants are boring, but 30+ chicken and some ducks need to eat.
I chose this year rather to get some trees and especially the windbreak in that this gets established until the dry years begin. I believe that trees and hedges are the key to fertility they create moisture and keep the hot drying and cold winds out. I tried clumping bamboo and I really hope to get them off this time. We have some 20.000 litres in water tanks, not enough, I want to add more, but planted everything closely that we will have a problem to get them in.
Creating a garden on our horrible fill is like running always behind.
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Post by steev on Dec 12, 2012 19:53:51 GMT -5
The trick is to put in perennial stuff whenever you can. We all want our annual veggies, but bit-by-bit if we establish stuff we don't have to re-plant, we can slowly get ahead. Sometimes we can only measure progress by square feet, not acres, but progress it is. The predictions may lead us to expect a hard climb, but we're in a marathon, not a sprint. Tortoises outlive hares.
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Post by bunkie on Jan 17, 2013 12:57:08 GMT -5
Global Grain Stocks Drop Dangerously Low as 2012 Consumption Exceeded ProductionThe world produced 2,241 million tons of grain in 2012, down 75 million tons or 3 percent from the 2011 record harvest. The drop was largely because of droughts that devastated several major crops—namely corn in the United States (the world’s largest crop) and wheat in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Australia. Each of these countries also is an important exporter. Global grain consumption fell significantly for the first time since 1995, as high prices dampened use for ethanol production and livestock feed. Still, overall consumption did exceed production. With drought persisting in key producing regions, there is concern that farmers in 2013 will again be unable to produce the surpluses necessary to rebuild lowered global grain reserves..... sustainablog.org/2013/01/global-grain-stocks-drop-dangerously-low-as-2012-consumption-exceeded-production/
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Post by davida on Jan 17, 2013 15:12:01 GMT -5
Global Grain Stocks Drop Dangerously Low as 2012 Consumption Exceeded ProductionThe world produced 2,241 million tons of grain in 2012, down 75 million tons or 3 percent from the 2011 record harvest. The drop was largely because of droughts that devastated several major crops—namely corn in the United States (the world’s largest crop) and wheat in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Australia. Each of these countries also is an important exporter. Global grain consumption fell significantly for the first time since 1995, as high prices dampened use for ethanol production and livestock feed. Still, overall consumption did exceed production. With drought persisting in key producing regions, there is concern that farmers in 2013 will again be unable to produce the surpluses necessary to rebuild lowered global grain reserves..... sustainablog.org/2013/01/global-grain-stocks-drop-dangerously-low-as-2012-consumption-exceeded-production/ Bunkie, Interesting article. In the next article listed: sustainablog.org/2013/01/global-grain-stocks-drop-dangerously-low-as-2012-consumption-exceeded-production/2/"Global grain consumption has exceeded production in 8 of the last 13 years, leading to a drawdown in reserves. Worldwide, carryover grain stocks—the amount left in the bin when the new harvest begins—stand at 423 million tons, enough to cover 68 days of consumption. This is just 6 days more than the low that preceded the 2007–08 grain crisis, when several countries restricted exports and food riots broke out in dozens of countries because of the spike in prices." |
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Post by MikeH on Feb 7, 2013 22:51:28 GMT -5
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