Non paywalled version: https://archive.ph/u7s5R

I'm kinda skeptical of the severity of this issue. Apparently Ukraine was expected to export 33.8 million tonnes of corn this year. The USDA says that the US produced 13,691,561,000 bushels of corn in 2019. If I converted the units correctly, that is 383 million tons. Just a 10% increase in production in the US alone would replace Ukraine's harvest.

Now there certainly could be an issue of price and logistics costs in food insecure nations, but I'm not sure the answer is enabling Ukrainian production rather than producing more outside of Ukraine / ensuring countries don't cut off global trade in grains.

Figures from: https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/...

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/export-losses-gi....

Logistics I think is large part of it. Another part is going to be the fertilizer shortage.

> Russia also exported 11% of the world's urea, and 48% of the ammonium nitrate. Russia and Ukraine together export 28% of fertilizers made from nitrogen and phosphorous, as well as potassium, according to Morgan Stanley.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/06/a-fertilizer-shortage-worsen...

Belarus potash exports, 18% of global supply, were also cut off in January due to US sanctions. This will force their dependence on Russia, with a Belarusian port on Russian soil, and for now they are struggling to export any of it.

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-17/belarus-p...

Here's some perspective on current fertilizer prices: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/fertilizer-prices-expec...

Famines are rarely caused by the lack of food. The necessary food usually exists somewhere, but those with the ability to deal with the situation are often unwilling to do so. Either they have better uses for the money and other resources or they just think it's not their responsibility.

There are more issues than that, such as exchange rates. Also many populations around the world spend almost their entire income on food and still can barely survive. They are very price sensitive. If the price of wheat doubles it's almost irrelevant for us in the west, but potentially lethal for many in the third world.

Honestly, just using existing corn less wastefully in the US might solve the problem.

> Just a 10% increase in production in the US alone

And how does that happen? Be very specific and quantitative. For example, which land gets planted that isn't planted now. Or, which crop gets replaced. Where do the inputs come from and how is that paid for? (Be sure to include equipment.)

Bloomberg notwithstanding, US farmers are actually fairly technically sophisticated. They're also money driven and competent.

Futures? This is what they’re for. Agriculture deals with shocks all the time. Nobody’s going to give you a centrally planned rundown.

Futures is just how farmers could pay to produce this extra 10%, assuming that everyone involved believes that farmers could deliver at less than the "raised" amount.

Futures doesn't address any of the "how do they actually do it" issues that I raised.

Ukraine is a big exporter of wheat and other grains. Combined with the fertilizer shortage, there's not a good way for global production to adjust in time for food security not to be an issue.

Why do you think it would be trivial to just increase production by 10%?

Before the invasion of Ukraine, covid has already wreaked havoc with agricultural supply chains. The war in Ukraine has made things worse but things were going to be bad even without it.

It was government actions related to covid which wreaked havoc on supply chains.

And endless wars are also government actions.

> It was government actions related to covid which wreaked havoc on supply chains.

A million dead in the US was always going to wreck havoc, not even counting the people in hospital. For all we know it would have been much worse without government action.

> And endless wars are also government actions.

That is not very helpful. Countries in the Middle East dependent on grain from Ukraine had absolutely no way of avoiding the war, and yet will bear the consequences. From their point of view, it is an uncontrollable calamity just like COVID.

> A million dead in the US was always going to wreck havoc, not even counting the people in hospital.

Nearly 3 million people die every year with or without covid. If your claims were true, we would've been facing supply chains issues for decades already.

The supply chain issues are obviously man-made. The who, what, when, where, why and how is anyone's guess.

> Countries in the Middle East dependent on grain from Ukraine had absolutely no way of avoiding the war,

They should have diversified or had contingencies plan already. What have they been doing since the last crisis 10 years ago? Also, the middle east has some of the wealthiest oil producing countries in the world. Let them figure it out and if not, let them remove their imcompetent leaders.

> Just a 10% increase in production in the US alone would replace Ukraine's harvest.

Given the fertilizer shortage, the US is most likely to produce 10% less.

My tinfoil hat head cannon says this is all hype to have a reason to make the price of any given grain skyrocket.

Interesting if food shortages will result in other conflicts, one of the causes for the Arab Spring were high food prices [1]

Is it possible that all this will result in a cascade of conflicts?

Here they are saying that food prices were going to rise due to COVID - and that was before the outbreak of the war [2]

Things seem to be going from bad to worse...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Causes

[2] https://www.ifpri.org/blog/covid-19-and-rising-global-food-p...

Possibly yes, look what's happening in Srilanka.

I would be interested in an analysis at scale of artifacts, components, foodstuffs, industrial inputs, which have similar impact to the loss of this source of wheat, against a worldwide wheat market.

If (eg) Argentina Bolivia and Chile were unable to supply Lithium, how long would it take the world to ramp up to using Australian sources, and what would it do to the supply chain?

Or, if the soybean crop failed in one economy, would worldwide pig production suffer?

Do you mean something like a "causal loop diagram" as mentioned in this article? https://www.transentis.com/understanding-the-beer-game/en/

(albeit at a larger scale and with more products and filter-by-country)

That's probably part of it, yes.

During peak covid vaccine ramp up, special plastic bags used in vaccine production were single source. So were the lipids and the factory to encapsulate the vaccine.

We saw mask and gown shortage, oxygen shortage, needle shortage.

Good opportunity to reduce livestock and redirect crops for human consumption

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/future-water-and-en...

As soon as humans grow multiple stomachs, we'll be all set.

What % of livestock feed requires four stomachs? What % of the land used for that feed grows crops that could not sustain people?

If you don't know the answer to either of these, you're full of shit.

I was unaware vegetarianism required surgery.

that is not what the person you're replying to said.

Sure it is. Humans don't need four stomachs to handle grain.

You'd need it to eat grass, but the article doesn't say anything about humans eating grass.

> With only grass-fed livestock, individual Americans would still get more than the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of meat and dairy protein, according to Pimentel's report, "Livestock Production: Energy Inputs and the Environment."

Is there really a "Recommended daily allowance of meat and dairy protein"? Sounds like propaganda from the meat and dairy industry like the food pyramid. I once met someone who studied to be a professional nutritionist, but left the field entirely because it is corrupted by special interests. IIRC to get certified she had to tow the party line that nutritionists should promote animal products as part of a healthy diet, and she decided to change fields instead.

Yeah, the whole food pyramid is various industries competing against each other. The grains recommendation is even nuttier; you're supposed to have a giant pile of pasta and maybe a veggie or two.

Michelle Obama took a stab at updating it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate) with quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth from industry and right-wing groups (https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/03/michelle-obama...).

the poster you replied to did not say that we needed 4 stomachs to digest grain, either. you're reading way more into their post than what was said.

it seems your misunderstanding results from the phrase "we'll be set", I think you took this general phrase to mean "we'll all be able to eat grain", yes?

if so, what the term actually means is, "we will be well prepared for the future", something that being able to eat grass would hypothetically help us with, since it would theoretically open up even more food options to more people

It was a direct reply to an article about eating less grain-fed meat and redirecting that crop production to humans, implying we'd need ruminant stomachs to do so.

I'm not sure why some HN discussions turn into a lesson on object permanence.

in the spirit of HN, your inferences should assume a good faith interpretation of a post, like I described

in this case, since growing 4 stomachs is obviously not a serious suggestion, the post was flippant, like,

"now we just need Mr. Fusion bionic stomachs and we'll be set [so we can burn trash, in addition to grass, in addition to grain... this bracketed part is the implied portion of the joke that usually doesn't need to be said]",

since the term "then we'll be set" is almost always used to describe the next step in improving something.

improve upon what, you may ask? your own idea! lol. the humor of the joke is that the suggestion is silly.

One thing I haven't noticed in the article is anything about wasted food. The common knowledge says: we've got enough food for everyone, it's just in the wrong place, so it's cheaper to throw away. If we really have global shortage, the balance of that will change and not throwing things out (or not overstocking in the first place) will become more common. I'd be interested in learning how much that affects the real shortage of food that we experience in the shop.

The common knowledge says there is enough food produced for everyone to not go hungry... but people want more than to not go hungry and they want it to be efficient for their life not for the food production/consumption ratio

The global wealthy can afford convenience and excess while the global poor can't afford basic needs. As such "it's just in the wrong place, so it's cheaper to throw away" is a desired outcome for the wealthy not a problem triggering inefficiency. It's also best to not equate food usage efficiency to general efficiency as a lot of the excess is the result of more food being cheaper than efficiently consuming less food. E.g. growing 100 apples to have 100 actually consumed apples takes a lot of effort to make happen. You have to make sure none go bad in transport, all are immediately sold at the store, and that people heavily plan out their lives around eating every apple they buy before it goes bad. It's just more efficient as a whole to make more apples even if that makes food efficiency look worse.

Carrying that forward whether or not there is a "global shortage" (taken to mean not enough produced for everyone to not go hungry) is irrelevant. People are already going hungry today so "enough that everyone can be fed" can't be the controller of why the wealthy can afford excess. The ability comes from their production and purchasing power compared to the world not the overall averages of the world.

Of course simple economics still exists and less of the good will result in a raise of price, the question of course being how much not working from decreased consumptions backwards. That raise in price is only proportional to how much is needed to lower global consumption. It's not a guarantee the wealthy will notice enough of an impact to no longer be able to afford excess. In reality the poor that were already short on food will see a bigger decrease in consumption than the wealthy due to price increases. A 10% price increase in food is only inconvenient for most in wealthy countries but in poor countries many have no choice but to consume less food as they have no more money to spend on it.

If I had to guess this shortage won't be near enough for production to be less than ideal distribution coveraging hunger. That said it'll still affect prices, just probably not enough for wealthy countries decreases in excess to have a meaningful impact on the overall supply.

Here is a visualization of where Ukraine and Russia export wheat. Its mostly parts of Africa and Asia. But Asia gets a lot from US and Canada

https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/rus.ukr/...

This kind of stuff really bothers me in addition to the ridiculous "meat shortage" or "save the coal miner's jobs" stuff. Let's use this as an opportunity to move past things that were popularized that don't really make that mucuh sense anymore.

Even for those who don't have celiac/gluten intolerance, gluten is high in lectins, and the molecule size is such that it can really cause damage to a lot of tissue. Wheat and dairy are extremely rough on the body and as time has gone on we've basically mutated to tolerate it.

Sorghum is a gluten free crop that's hardy and grows with less water, in addition to having a favorable nutrient profile full of antioxidants. Getting more antioxidants in the diet can really be the tipping point for those who have a genetic predisposition to autoimmune and other disorders and that's why things have gotten so bad under the crappy western diet.

Sorry if I'm just being dense here but I really don't understand why "grain shortage" or "meat shortage" are thrown around in the media as being life and death situations. There are surely grains that are more heat tolerant and we can further cultivate and select for types of healthier grains that are instead of trying to make wheat happen because "mm bread/beer". I don't eat either of those things and I suspect that communities who suffered a shortage of either of those things would also find a way to make do, potentially to their benefit by integrating more diverse foods.

I guess if at the end of the day climate change is such that nothing can grow we're screwed but then why is this article so focused on wheat in particular? If a certain crop or export just isn't making sense sustainability wise this ends up just looking like the old "buuuttt the coal miners will lose their jobs" type story.

We could feed people instead of cows, chickens, and pigs.

It would be interesting to see some graphs of how international trade in grain compares to total production (including internal consumption).

Doesn't the US currently pay some farmers not to grow food -- or is that a myth?

Yes, we do that to control prices and prevent oversupply.

let's say if the shortfall makes up 30% of supply.. surely those 70% other farmers would just need to raise by 140% or so to FULLY make up the difference? everyone pitch in a little, shouldn't be THAT big of a deal surely....

My father is a (retired) farmer. Wheat is a pretty reliable crop that pays for itself, but you don't really make money on it. So, you grow some wheat, and you grow other stuff, such as canola, in order to get paid. With the elevated prices, a bit more wheat may have been planted this year, but you have to remember that the prices of the inputs have gone up as well, particularly fertilizer and fuel. Moreover, any land used to grow wheat is not growing something else. In the end, it doesn't make a lot of economic sense to increase wheat production when you can use the land and resources for higher value crops.

This is highly dependent on the area. My family has a background in wheat farming, I grew up in an area with a lot of family wheat farms, and if you are in an area with good soil and the weather is good you can make a lot of money on a wheat crop even in so-so international wheat price conditions.

They rotate in other crops for soil balance but YMMV in terms of wheat profits.

Fair enough, different crops do better in different areas. In your case, for reasons of crop rotation (which you mentioned), they are still unlikely to be able to substantially increase wheat production. Farming is one of the most "free market" industries out there. In most cases, everything is already highly optimised.

that would be easy if there was an AWS for Food!

Here is the reality, not only the grains but the inputs like fertilizers etc are sky-rocketing. Every body wants to piss of Fossil Fuels with out even understanding how foundational they are to Modern Civilization (I welcome the downvotes but I will not stop advocating).

Say, with me, N P K - Nitrogen Phosphorous Pottasium. Belarus is a major Potash supplier, Natural gas is important for Fertilizer production etc. These inputs are now expensive.

But the policy genius, LOVE Price Controls, so what prices do these guys love controlling, they target staples .. grains, rice etc.

Now if you are farmer, who has to invest more money given the increased cost of fertilizers etc. and the government will come and take away the grain below market rate -- are you going to play the game? That is the game in much of the developing world.. and to some extend even developed world.

So your AWS style solution of spinning another EC2 instance for Food does not work in the real world.

It comes back at us in all kinds of weird ways, too. Biofuel production, for example. Farmers make choices all the time to switch their production to be maximally profitable (example: Almost all of NZ shifting from lamb to milk production in the past few decades).

Biofuel production puts a spanner in things because previously we were swapping some form of consumable calories for another form of consumable calorie. But now you've got fuel production competing with food production, and their prices will begin to compete similarly. That inevitably leads to either cheaper fuel (spoiler: still not great for emissions) or significantly more expensive staple foods.

So any kind of squeeze on fossil fuel pricing leads to a down-stream increase on food pricing, one greater than just the energy use for production/transportation.

> the government will come and take away the grain below market rate

First, that rate is below what the market rate would without government farm supports. Second, the government doesn't confiscate grain. At least not in western countries.

I upvote you.

Everyone shits on fossil fuels with no idea how crucial they are. No fossil fuels. No modern society. Turn it off and death will follow.

Can't tell if this is a joke or not. One would think that if a farmer could raise output (and thus revenue) by 140% on short demand, they would have already done so years ago?

They can increase wheat production by growing less of other crops. Rationale: wheat is more profitable because of its scarcity.

I guess smaller shortages spread over many crops is better than a large shortage in one major crop. Here's hoping it all works out!

I tried copy and pasting certain paragraphs from the article here, (weather/price of inputs/farmer incentives/how wheat is purchased by nations/monetary policies/etc) but there are so many compounding global issues here one might just consider rereading the article instead.

It is quite a big deal.

LOL, tech guys (me included) are SO detached from real life.

This is not a "just spin up more AWS instances" kind of thing.

Doesn't help that the build pipeline takes a long time to complete. By the time the build is done, the needs may have changed. Agriculture is not good at iterative development, at least not rapid iterative development.

https://twitter.com/kannbwx/status/1528832246936920065 ok this doesn't look good at all, time to stock up people. preppers were right after all.

Based on your farming experience how difficult is it for the average farmer to more than double their wheat production?

The war wouldn’t be such a problem if Ukraine received proper anti-ship missiles.

> The war wouldn’t be such a problem if Ukraine received proper anti-ship missiles.

That's very difficult to say, actually; the Moskova was sunk with them after all, but the bigger issue is the abhorrent and indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations by the Russians. Fields with farmers and homes and hospitals with civilians are not of military importance. And yet, Russia keeps shooting them.

The truth is Putin's Kremlin is to blame for this wide-spread shortage and upcoming famine in many regions of the World, the West should just take the funds they seized as seed money to grow wheat in Africa this season even if it's a loss to offset this massive lost in cultivation in Ukraine.

For what it's worth, planting is still taking place [0], it's just being disrupted and will not be as large of a grow as it was prior to the invasion, so the yields will be reduced. I have it on good authority that in Lviv Oblast, specifically in Trasncarpathia things are still going into the ground as planned since Spring.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-nOuy5C60Q

The problem is that Russia has a sea blockade not allowing Ukrainian ships with grain to leave ports. That's where the missiles could help. (in the same time Russia sells stolen from Ukraine grain itself).

I’ve read that the disruption in fertilizer feedstock (especially methane) is going to reduce yields in other parts of the world, as well.

That’s true of course, but from my understanding the main problem at the moment is exporting the grain, not production of said grain.

No, growing is definitely going to be an issue, as is storing it because Russia has been targeting Grain silos, too.

The transportation aspect is a critical issue, too, but one would like to think that as Russia is being pushed back to the border that the center and West will be able to transport to Poland/Romania to enter EU markets by the time harvest occurs in the Fall.

The main issue is that Russia keeps attacking civilian targets as well as Military ones, the recent bombing in Lviv also struck and damaged the trains [0].

Again, the sanctions on Russian oil need to be swift and deceive if this is going to stop anytime soon, they are losing nearly $1 billion per day of the illegal war in Ukraine. This only possible because of the few EU nations holding out on a total withdraw from Russian energy. I get the implications are dire, but this is the reality of countries like Germany and Italy building their entire economies around Russian energy, but this is what will shift the West to renewables more than anything else in my lifetime. So, short term pain but long term thinking needs to be put into place.

Summer is here, and it's already clear to me that it's no different than what we've had since COVID started the numbers look remarkably the same and the recession is showing.

I just hope that we make progress in this area and we can justify the last 3 years by making a massive leap towards renewable energy being at the core of energy useage.

0: https://archive.ph/hpTqF

Transportation is the bigger issue.

Ukrainian grain exports used to be tens of millions of tonnes per year. That's something like a million semitrucks or a million railway cars. You can't build that kind of capacity in a few months, especially not in the middle of an all-out war.

As long as Russia can operate submarines in the Black Sea, it can blockade Ukrainian ports. No foreign cargo ship will approach the ports, and no foreign insurer will insure such ships.

Ukraine also depended on Russian energy. If Europe wants to phase out Russian energy imports, it can't supply enough fuel to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine has better uses for the fuel it can get than exporting low-value bulk goods. Like keeping its military operational, which also needs the trucks that could export grain.

Ukraine uses the Soviet 1520 mm rail gauge, while its western neighbors use the 1435 mm gauge. That creates a huge bottleneck for rail transport. Not to mention that Russia has been targeting Ukrainian railway infrastructure.

There are not that many major roads from Ukraine to the west, and some of them are unusable. The border between Moldova and Ukraine is largely controlled by Russian-backed separatists, while Russia has been bombing the bridges on the only road south of Moldova repeatedly.

> Transportation is the bigger issue.

I agree, but, as a person who has a background in supply chain, it's entirely moot if their is no yield to transport; I think what's significant here, is that occupation poses the largest threat.

> That's very difficult to say, actually; the Moskova was sunk with them after all, but the bigger issue is the abhorrent and indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations by the Russians. Fields with farmers and homes and hospitals with civilians are not of military importance. And yet, Russia keeps shooting them.

According to western media.

> The truth is Putin's Kremlin is to blame for this wide-spread shortage

Yeah that would be easy, however it's not as cut and dry (it rarely is). You could as easily blame Zelenskyy for killing thousands of east Ukrainians prior. And then their is the coup d'état in 2014 as well and the constant provocations of the NATO in general. So I am not so sure that Putin's Kremlin alone is to blame.

> According to western media.

Wow, that's a new level of denial. Take a look, this happened yesterday [0].

This is a "culture hall", pretty far away from the front lines, where kids used to learn to play music. More than ten injured including children.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnU_3ljHMQ

Almost everything being put out now is propaganda for someone. Not sure why anyone would trust western media but the alternative certainly isn't to trust RT, Sputnik, or any of their sibling media outlets either. Anyone who thinks they've got a good handle on the situation in Ukraine is living in a bubble of wishful thinking. Eventually the physical world will win out regardless of what the Metaverse and cyberspace presents as being true.

It’s a barely noteworthy Russian propaganda line tbh.

If it was from RT I would add "According to Russian media". Is that then a barely noteworthy western propaganda line or just the truth?

Russian crimes are pretty well documented at this point, see eg https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/04/04/russias-bucha-fac...

Circular logic. Because Russian crimes are documented (in western media) every war crime attributed to Russians must be true as well.

Shrug. Russian news being shit is an issue on its own. What aboutism need not apply.

Russia has submarines in the black sea.

Including at least one converted guided missile cruiser.

I don't think submarines can include cruisers ;P

They just don't resurface... ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva

I stand corrected!

As well as mines.

Why is that?

The theory is that the Ukranians would use those missiles to clear the Black Sea blockade and then they would be able to resume shipping grain, grain-precursors, and other goods as they did before the war. There's more to the situation than that, so it's impossible to say if that would be enough, unfortunately, but that's the theory.

The agricultural revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Do you mean that remaining primitive hunters-gatherers, as now observed in certain places near Amazon river, would be more of a success?

I don't support trying to turn back the clock, but modern day hunter gatherers should not be thought of as a reliable picture of past hunter-gatherers.

For one, they mostly inhabit some of the lowest quality land since the best land has been taken by industrial society. Past hunter-gatherers would have had their pick of land.

yes according to modern media sentiment. Never once have I watched a movie that argued for the antithesis of the "Avatar" respect nature mantra. I mean even without the warmongering factories are never portrayed in a positive light unless they're Willy Wonka's.

The media sentiment skips over the newborn deaths, starvation due to bad year of weather, families wiped by simple diseases, and all the other things we pretty much learned how to deal with.

I wouldn't figure what society you'd be happy in based on media depictions. They're selling you whatever you'll buy. They sold the Jetsons back in the day.

I think you need to rewatch/reread Willie Wonka...

why do you need to argue for the existing society that mostly everbody agrees with. That'd make a boring movie.

The grass is always greener

Thanks to chemical pesticides and industrial fertilizers.

Yes. Thousands of years of class societies haven’t been great.

But the revolution happened out of sheer necessity, not out of choice. Hunter-gatherer societies aren’t sustainable past a certain threshold of population density.

Our brains were certainly larger on an individual level, but those individuals could never surpass a few tens of thousands, spread globally, the farther the better!

We built human civilization so that we could Show HN the app that we built. Take that, hunter-gatherers.