9 ms·

That's nice and all but it doesn't really help countries like Egypt that import over 60% of the wheat they consume.[1] [1] https://theconversation.com/russia-u

by ginko 5y ago

That's nice and all but it doesn't really help countries like Egypt that import over 60% of the wheat they consume.[1] [1] https://theconversation.com/russia-ukraine-crisis-poses-a-serious-threat-to-egypt-the-worlds-largest-wheat-importer-179242 https://theconversation.com/russia-ukraine-crisis-poses-a-se...

mooreds 5y ago
If the shortfall in exported wheat is ~1% of global production, and farmers in other countries (India, USA) already are planting more to make up for it, what is preventing Egypt and others from importing from those other countries to replace Ukraine/Russian exports? What am I missing?
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  Political will, removing subsidies for farmers, logistics of actually shipping wheat, climate change, etc.
  - mooreds 5y ago
    > Political will Of who? Don't the farmers who grew extra wheat want to sell it? Or are you talking about governments preventing wheat exports (I know that has happened in the past). > removing subsidies for farmers Not sure how that is germane. What do you mean? > logistics of actually shipping wheat That's a great point! Shipping from the Black Sea ports to Egypt/other ME nations is surely cheaper than sending wheat from India/Aus/USA to those areas. > climate change, etc. Sure, that's a threat to wheat (and food in general) everywhere and will be for decades. Do you see it as particularly acute/relevant to the current situation? I don't.
  - drexlspivey 5y ago
    How is climate change preventing Egypt to import wheat from India instead of Russia?
    - KarlKemp 5y ago
      By causing a previous rise in food prices in the region, which caused a hungry merchant to immolate himself, which caused widespread protests and, ultimately, unrest including the Syrian war, which allowed Putin to test his air force, creating the smug attitude that he could invade the Ukraine.
      - throwaway6532 5y ago
        The previous rise in food prices also being attributable to the Russian heatwave of 2010 being the link to climate change.
- Loughla 5y ago
  So spring wheat is harvested in the fall, and won't be planted for a little bit in the US, because it's just now starting to get to spring in many states. Winter wheat, which would be harvested this spring, should've been planted months ago. So there's a gap in production, regardless of where they get their wheat from, I guess is what I'm trying to get at.
  - mooreds 5y ago
    From the twitter thread: > And the world's farmers already started planting more wheat 4 months ago, when wheat futures rose due to possibility of Black Sea conflict. > India went all-out planting more wheat, looks set to continue a 3yr streak of rapidly increasing wheat exports. The US planted four MILLION more tons more wheat seed last fall than usual. Aus, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, even Brazil getting in on it. The author's credentials: "I'm Sarah Taber, a crop scientist with 23 years in agriculture. I started out in field work at 14, put myself through crop school, and got a front-seat view of the dirty underbelly of the farm trade." https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5610560 https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5610560
    - Kon-Peki 5y ago
      Here are the last 6 years of winter wheat crop reports in the USA [1]. I don't believe that the slight increase in winter 2021/spring 2022 planting in the USA is anything other than a normal variation. I make no claim to know anything about the rest of the world, but I am skeptical that expectations of a Black Sea conflict has anything to do with planting 4 months ago. PS, you can get even more data, further back in history, directly from the USDA [2], but it is a little difficult to navigate this site. This link [3] might work for everyone, it is a query for acres of wheat planted all the way back to 1919. [1] https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/z890rt24s https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/z890rt... [2] https://www.nass.usda.gov https://www.nass.usda.gov [3] https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/64834CCE-2C3A-39A1-838C-88B437DF6C96?pivot=short_desc https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/64834CCE-2C3A-39A1-...
  - nkurz 5y ago
    > Winter wheat, which would be harvested this spring Since this is a site that cares about accuracy, I'll mention that while winter wheat is planted in the winter, it's harvested in the summer or fall. It doesn't grow fast enough to be harvested in the spring. Instead, it's a way of getting a boost on the season by getting the roots established early. I don't think there is anywhere it can be harvested early enough that one can plant two crops per year in the same field. More details and dates for the US: https://www.machinefinder.com/ww/en-US/faq/when-is-winter-wheat-harvested https://www.machinefinder.com/ww/en-US/faq/when-is-winter-wh... (If you want to claim that you are technically correct, I'll concede that it is true that hypothetical Florida or Alabama winter wheat might be harvested in May. I hadn't even known that they grow winter wheat there!)
- awb 5y ago
  The author frames the problem less as a wheat production problem and more as a shipping problem. > Again, specific places are facing EXTREMELY REAL wheat supply problems. MENA usually sources from Ukraine. Switching supply chains to India & other sources takes extra time, & if they're further away from India and Ukraine, it takes longer for supplies to get there. FYI, MENA = Middle East / North Africa > What these places are facing is a SHIPPING shortage. Not a lack of enough wheat in the world. Their food supply chain problems are still dangerous. A local, shipping-induced shortage that lasts a week can still kill you.
  - pempem 5y ago
    A sincere question: Would it not then be helpful to support these new or temporary supply chains as a war effort? Shouldn't that fall under humanitarian aid?
    - bell-cot 5y ago
      If the shortages are in rail lines, grain elevators, shipping terminals, bulk cargo ships, etc...no sort of "support" can create those at all quickly.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        Trucks. Lots and lots of trucks.
        webmaven 5y ago
        Leaving aside the issue that trucks can't move stuff across oceans, how do you get the extra trucks to where they are needed?
        danuker 5y ago
        As a Romanian I visited Lviv a few years ago. There were some disaster potholes right past the border. It took 1 hour to go through say, 10km with a small car. Unless those roads get fixed, I expect only military or otherwise rugged trucks to be able to pass quickly. Otherwise, you'd need a lot of trucks to get a significant flow of goods. Example: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.0388842,22.9469939,3a,75y,331.94h,66.84t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ssePIFIlb_a9MdOGsi7k5-w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DsePIFIlb_a9MdOGsi7k5-w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D288.98862%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@48.0388842,22.9469939,3a,75y,33...
- woeirua 5y ago
  The physical wheat may exist, but it may not be possible to supply it at the same prices (especially given increased transportation costs due to energy prices). There may be no physical shortage, but if prices for wheat increase 50% in Egypt then many people will go hungry.
- prostoalex 5y ago
  > and farmers in other countries (India, USA) already are planting more to make up for it Are they? Fertilizer prices are up 3x-5x, depending on where you look, due to Russian export restrictions, so for many farmers it's cheaper to wait it out and give the soil a rest. Planting reports have only started trickling in, so we don't have a good global view of what has been planted in spring 2022.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Most wheat was planted 4 months ago, according to the author.
    - keneda7 5y ago
      Contrary to what the US media and current US administration are saying, we had major issues before Russia invaded Ukraine. This idea that the Russia invasion is responsible for all these problems is ludicrous. Yes, it has made them worse but it is not the root cause. The fertilizer shortage was happening at the end of last year. You know the 4 months ago you quoted. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/fertilizer-shortage-north-america-farmers-food-prices https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/fertiliz...
      - jtbayly 5y ago
        Some farmers were delaying buying fertilizer, according to that article. Nothing in that article indicates that they were not planting because of a "shortage." Prices were simply higher and some people were betting on them going up and some were betting on them going down. I'm in agreement with the idea that this isn't primarily caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Read the author's other thread on fertilizer for more context on that. She says it's primarily a shipping problem, not a production of fertilizer problem. Which tracks with the idea that this is simply another example of the global supply chain snarling things up.
  - randomdata 5y ago
    > so for many farmers it's cheaper to wait it out and give the soil a rest. If you play your cards right, and Mother Nature plays nice, this could be the most profitable year of farming seen in a long time. Costs are up, yes, but the income potential is up even more. Why would anyone choose this year, of all years, to "give the soil a rest"?
- ineedasername 5y ago
  >What am I missing? Shifting suppliers on this scale in normal times isn't a quick process. Right now global logistics are still a complete & total mess. With great uncertainty, $cost becomes somewhat disconnected from supply. Right now futures are up about 40%. Availability won't mean much if it isn't affordable, and countries need to lock in supply because it's not really a JIT distribution system (see previous point on logistics). If the war has disrupted your deliveries 3 months out, you need to lock in new contracts now (if not 3 months ago) to keep supply moving.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Grain is shipped in large specialized dry bulk cargo ships. It’s a lot closer to ship from Ukraine to, say, Egypt than to ship from Australia or Canada or even India. If you ship your grain N times farther, you need N times as many ships to make the same number of trips. Those ships don’t exist or can’t be mustered on short notice, so you have to use some other kind of (less-specialized, less efficient and more expensive) shipping. Even if you can manage to get all of the grain where it needs to go on new routes, the price of grain is going to go up substantially in places previously importing from Russia/Ukraine, and the logistical changes will cause second-order disruptions to other global shipping.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > If you ship your grain N times farther, you need N times as many ships to make the same number of trips. Which would be really bad if it was a global increase, but when it's a tiny sliver of the market you only need a sliver of spare capacity.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        >you only need a sliver of spare capacity If there was spare capacity, but there doesn't seem to be much at all. 1 in 10 inter-country wheat shipments will be Ukrainian, and it's about 1 in 7 for corn, probably other crops as well. Repurposing that shipping capacity isn't easy either, from a logistics standpoint. It can take up to a month just for a ship to cross the Pacific, before any other route complexities. It doesn't help that there's over 100 such cargo ships tied up in Ukrainian ports either, a decent proportion of which will be the subset of cargo ships fitted out for bulk grain transport. The last few years have already shown us how delicate the global logistics & supply chains are. It doesn't take much to stretch them near to the breaking point, and we're already close to that point.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > What am I missing? Logistics. Food scarcity is a problem not of supply but of transport. More wheat in the American heartland doesn't help Egypt if every truck, ship and port is booked out for six months. More rice produced in India doesn't help if half of it rots en route to the city.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    This famine is primarily a logistics problem not supply.
phreeza 5y ago
Presumably they already bought wheat futures for a significant fraction of demand, and so it is up to the sellers to organize the actual wheat, possibly at a loss.
- throwaway6532 5y ago
  They have 4 months worth of strategic reserves and I read somewhere planned deliveries will bring that up to 8 months worth. I think the danger is in future if those 8 months worth get burnt through and replacements don't come. That's still an unknown at this point, but it's what I'm personally watching out for in terms of being able to see around the corner to what may be coming next.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
As an aside, I found that fascinating that Egypt is such a huge grain importer. In the ancient world, Egypt was one of the largest grain producers and basically fed the Roman Empire.
- bell-cot 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Egypt#Vital_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Egypt#Vital_st... Looks like the population went from ~15.4M in 1934 to ~100.5M in 2020. I'd bet that neither the area devoted to agriculture, nor the productivity (per unit area) increased by anything resembling that ~553% increase.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    Probably it did. It did in the US over that time. Modern farming practices raised yields on some crops from ~20bu per acre to around 200 today.
    - bell-cot 5y ago
      Perhaps. But to skim over Egypt's economic history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Egypt#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Egypt#History - their only substantial exports, back in the 1930's, were agricultural products. I'll guess that the British Empire was not generously subsidizing Egypt's food imports then, nor were there millions of free-spending tourists to be paying, nor... Edit: Okay, perhaps Egypt had replaced many of its wheat fields with cotton fields by the 1930's, and was buying food with the cotton money. The British cotton industry might have loved that...but "massive food imports paid for with a cash crop" is a dangerous strategy to play long-term, or on a national scale. And Egypt threw off the last of the British yoke in the mid-1950's.
BasilPH 5y ago
She talks about this further down in the thread, making it her main point: > Again, specific places are facing EXTREMELY REAL wheat supply problems. MENA usually sources from Ukraine. Switching supply chains to India & other sources takes extra time, & if they're further away from India and Ukraine, it takes longer for supplies to get there. and > To solve that problem, we gotta start with being clear on what the problem IS! > We haven't! We decided it's a wheat shortage, not a shipping shortage. > So investors panicked, drove up the price of wheat, & made it even harder for these places to get new import shipments launched
dustymcp 5y ago
That is ironic given they where the grain suppliers of ancient rome? [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
- xbar 5y ago
  Why is it no longer possible for Egypt to grow its own wheat?
  - OwlsParlay 5y ago
    They do, but their population has also ballooned far past what their own agriculture can supply.
  - senortumnus 5y ago
    Slightly informed guess is that the highly productive but water-constrained farmland of the nile valley is better used for value crops, like fresh fruits and vegetable, than a staple such as wheat which is more cheaply grown elsewhere. Edit: there’s a great writeup about “hoop” style greenhouse farming there and how productive and water efficient it is… but the article escapes me presently Edit2: ah! Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/dining/norwich-meadows-farm-vegetables.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/dining/norwich-meadows-fa...
  - denni9th 5y ago
    Egypt is mostly desert, the only arable land is on the banks of the Nile.
    - screenbreakout 5y ago
      While I was there this winter, I saw huge new plantations of dates? or palm (oil)? in the western desert sucking up the underground aquifers....fields with cows grazing there... also they're probably growing wheat....doesn't look sustainable but what do I know about the politics of economic corruption.... bread is dirt cheap, it being a bit more expensive might lead them to improve their diet somewhat... I mean their dates are fabulous...
gumby 5y ago
It sure does and the article explains it (it’s a transport issue not a supply issue, as the growth in wheat production this year will exceed the shortfall).
chewz 5y ago
Egypt - arable land 2.9 pct (more or less constant from 1961). Population - 105 milion (1961 - 26 milion). https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/egypt-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/egypt-populat... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.ZS?locations=EG https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.ZS?location...
lolinder 5y ago
It makes a big difference everywhere else, though. I personally know people in the US who are buying large quantities of wheat and other food in preparation for the pending food crisis. They expect food prices in general to go through the roof because 1/4 of the world's wheat has suddenly gone missing. While there will be famines because of this war, if Sarah Taber's numbers are accurate then the reporting within the United States has been horribly irresponsible, and it's important to call it out and spread the real numbers.
ngold 5y ago
On a side tangent, wasn't Egypt the bread basket of rome? What happened there? Did the Nile dry up?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

by ginko 5y ago

mooreds 5y ago

If the shortfall in exported wheat is ~1% of global production, and farmers in other countries (India, USA) already are planting more to make up for it, what is preventing Egypt and others from importing from those other countries to replace Ukraine/Russian exports? What am I missing?

blaser-waffle 5y ago
Political will, removing subsidies for farmers, logistics of actually shipping wheat, climate change, etc.
- mooreds 5y ago
  > Political will Of who? Don't the farmers who grew extra wheat want to sell it? Or are you talking about governments preventing wheat exports (I know that has happened in the past). > removing subsidies for farmers Not sure how that is germane. What do you mean? > logistics of actually shipping wheat That's a great point! Shipping from the Black Sea ports to Egypt/other ME nations is surely cheaper than sending wheat from India/Aus/USA to those areas. > climate change, etc. Sure, that's a threat to wheat (and food in general) everywhere and will be for decades. Do you see it as particularly acute/relevant to the current situation? I don't.
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  How is climate change preventing Egypt to import wheat from India instead of Russia?
  - KarlKemp 5y ago
    By causing a previous rise in food prices in the region, which caused a hungry merchant to immolate himself, which caused widespread protests and, ultimately, unrest including the Syrian war, which allowed Putin to test his air force, creating the smug attitude that he could invade the Ukraine.
    - throwaway6532 5y ago
      The previous rise in food prices also being attributable to the Russian heatwave of 2010 being the link to climate change.
Loughla 5y ago
So spring wheat is harvested in the fall, and won't be planted for a little bit in the US, because it's just now starting to get to spring in many states. Winter wheat, which would be harvested this spring, should've been planted months ago. So there's a gap in production, regardless of where they get their wheat from, I guess is what I'm trying to get at.
- mooreds 5y ago
  From the twitter thread: > And the world's farmers already started planting more wheat 4 months ago, when wheat futures rose due to possibility of Black Sea conflict. > India went all-out planting more wheat, looks set to continue a 3yr streak of rapidly increasing wheat exports. The US planted four MILLION more tons more wheat seed last fall than usual. Aus, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, even Brazil getting in on it. The author's credentials: "I'm Sarah Taber, a crop scientist with 23 years in agriculture. I started out in field work at 14, put myself through crop school, and got a front-seat view of the dirty underbelly of the farm trade." https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5610560 https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5610560
  - Kon-Peki 5y ago
    Here are the last 6 years of winter wheat crop reports in the USA [1]. I don't believe that the slight increase in winter 2021/spring 2022 planting in the USA is anything other than a normal variation. I make no claim to know anything about the rest of the world, but I am skeptical that expectations of a Black Sea conflict has anything to do with planting 4 months ago. PS, you can get even more data, further back in history, directly from the USDA [2], but it is a little difficult to navigate this site. This link [3] might work for everyone, it is a query for acres of wheat planted all the way back to 1919. [1] https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/z890rt24s https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/z890rt... [2] https://www.nass.usda.gov https://www.nass.usda.gov [3] https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/64834CCE-2C3A-39A1-838C-88B437DF6C96?pivot=short_desc https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/64834CCE-2C3A-39A1-...
- nkurz 5y ago
  > Winter wheat, which would be harvested this spring Since this is a site that cares about accuracy, I'll mention that while winter wheat is planted in the winter, it's harvested in the summer or fall. It doesn't grow fast enough to be harvested in the spring. Instead, it's a way of getting a boost on the season by getting the roots established early. I don't think there is anywhere it can be harvested early enough that one can plant two crops per year in the same field. More details and dates for the US: https://www.machinefinder.com/ww/en-US/faq/when-is-winter-wheat-harvested https://www.machinefinder.com/ww/en-US/faq/when-is-winter-wh... (If you want to claim that you are technically correct, I'll concede that it is true that hypothetical Florida or Alabama winter wheat might be harvested in May. I hadn't even known that they grow winter wheat there!)
awb 5y ago
The author frames the problem less as a wheat production problem and more as a shipping problem. > Again, specific places are facing EXTREMELY REAL wheat supply problems. MENA usually sources from Ukraine. Switching supply chains to India & other sources takes extra time, & if they're further away from India and Ukraine, it takes longer for supplies to get there. FYI, MENA = Middle East / North Africa > What these places are facing is a SHIPPING shortage. Not a lack of enough wheat in the world. Their food supply chain problems are still dangerous. A local, shipping-induced shortage that lasts a week can still kill you.
- pempem 5y ago
  A sincere question: Would it not then be helpful to support these new or temporary supply chains as a war effort? Shouldn't that fall under humanitarian aid?
  - bell-cot 5y ago
    If the shortages are in rail lines, grain elevators, shipping terminals, bulk cargo ships, etc...no sort of "support" can create those at all quickly.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      Trucks. Lots and lots of trucks.
      - webmaven 5y ago
        Leaving aside the issue that trucks can't move stuff across oceans, how do you get the extra trucks to where they are needed?
        danuker 5y ago
        As a Romanian I visited Lviv a few years ago. There were some disaster potholes right past the border. It took 1 hour to go through say, 10km with a small car. Unless those roads get fixed, I expect only military or otherwise rugged trucks to be able to pass quickly. Otherwise, you'd need a lot of trucks to get a significant flow of goods. Example: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.0388842,22.9469939,3a,75y,331.94h,66.84t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ssePIFIlb_a9MdOGsi7k5-w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DsePIFIlb_a9MdOGsi7k5-w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D288.98862%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@48.0388842,22.9469939,3a,75y,33...
woeirua 5y ago
The physical wheat may exist, but it may not be possible to supply it at the same prices (especially given increased transportation costs due to energy prices). There may be no physical shortage, but if prices for wheat increase 50% in Egypt then many people will go hungry.
prostoalex 5y ago
> and farmers in other countries (India, USA) already are planting more to make up for it Are they? Fertilizer prices are up 3x-5x, depending on where you look, due to Russian export restrictions, so for many farmers it's cheaper to wait it out and give the soil a rest. Planting reports have only started trickling in, so we don't have a good global view of what has been planted in spring 2022.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Most wheat was planted 4 months ago, according to the author.
  - keneda7 5y ago
    Contrary to what the US media and current US administration are saying, we had major issues before Russia invaded Ukraine. This idea that the Russia invasion is responsible for all these problems is ludicrous. Yes, it has made them worse but it is not the root cause. The fertilizer shortage was happening at the end of last year. You know the 4 months ago you quoted. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/fertilizer-shortage-north-america-farmers-food-prices https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/fertiliz...
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      Some farmers were delaying buying fertilizer, according to that article. Nothing in that article indicates that they were not planting because of a "shortage." Prices were simply higher and some people were betting on them going up and some were betting on them going down. I'm in agreement with the idea that this isn't primarily caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Read the author's other thread on fertilizer for more context on that. She says it's primarily a shipping problem, not a production of fertilizer problem. Which tracks with the idea that this is simply another example of the global supply chain snarling things up.
- randomdata 5y ago
  > so for many farmers it's cheaper to wait it out and give the soil a rest. If you play your cards right, and Mother Nature plays nice, this could be the most profitable year of farming seen in a long time. Costs are up, yes, but the income potential is up even more. Why would anyone choose this year, of all years, to "give the soil a rest"?
ineedasername 5y ago
>What am I missing? Shifting suppliers on this scale in normal times isn't a quick process. Right now global logistics are still a complete & total mess. With great uncertainty, $cost becomes somewhat disconnected from supply. Right now futures are up about 40%. Availability won't mean much if it isn't affordable, and countries need to lock in supply because it's not really a JIT distribution system (see previous point on logistics). If the war has disrupted your deliveries 3 months out, you need to lock in new contracts now (if not 3 months ago) to keep supply moving.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  Grain is shipped in large specialized dry bulk cargo ships. It’s a lot closer to ship from Ukraine to, say, Egypt than to ship from Australia or Canada or even India. If you ship your grain N times farther, you need N times as many ships to make the same number of trips. Those ships don’t exist or can’t be mustered on short notice, so you have to use some other kind of (less-specialized, less efficient and more expensive) shipping. Even if you can manage to get all of the grain where it needs to go on new routes, the price of grain is going to go up substantially in places previously importing from Russia/Ukraine, and the logistical changes will cause second-order disruptions to other global shipping.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > If you ship your grain N times farther, you need N times as many ships to make the same number of trips. Which would be really bad if it was a global increase, but when it's a tiny sliver of the market you only need a sliver of spare capacity.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      >you only need a sliver of spare capacity If there was spare capacity, but there doesn't seem to be much at all. 1 in 10 inter-country wheat shipments will be Ukrainian, and it's about 1 in 7 for corn, probably other crops as well. Repurposing that shipping capacity isn't easy either, from a logistics standpoint. It can take up to a month just for a ship to cross the Pacific, before any other route complexities. It doesn't help that there's over 100 such cargo ships tied up in Ukrainian ports either, a decent proportion of which will be the subset of cargo ships fitted out for bulk grain transport. The last few years have already shown us how delicate the global logistics & supply chains are. It doesn't take much to stretch them near to the breaking point, and we're already close to that point.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> What am I missing? Logistics. Food scarcity is a problem not of supply but of transport. More wheat in the American heartland doesn't help Egypt if every truck, ship and port is booked out for six months. More rice produced in India doesn't help if half of it rots en route to the city.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  This famine is primarily a logistics problem not supply.

phreeza 5y ago

Presumably they already bought wheat futures for a significant fraction of demand, and so it is up to the sellers to organize the actual wheat, possibly at a loss.

throwaway6532 5y ago
They have 4 months worth of strategic reserves and I read somewhere planned deliveries will bring that up to 8 months worth. I think the danger is in future if those 8 months worth get burnt through and replacements don't come. That's still an unknown at this point, but it's what I'm personally watching out for in terms of being able to see around the corner to what may be coming next.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

As an aside, I found that fascinating that Egypt is such a huge grain importer. In the ancient world, Egypt was one of the largest grain producers and basically fed the Roman Empire.

bell-cot 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Egypt#Vital_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Egypt#Vital_st... Looks like the population went from ~15.4M in 1934 to ~100.5M in 2020. I'd bet that neither the area devoted to agriculture, nor the productivity (per unit area) increased by anything resembling that ~553% increase.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Probably it did. It did in the US over that time. Modern farming practices raised yields on some crops from ~20bu per acre to around 200 today.
  - bell-cot 5y ago
    Perhaps. But to skim over Egypt's economic history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Egypt#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Egypt#History - their only substantial exports, back in the 1930's, were agricultural products. I'll guess that the British Empire was not generously subsidizing Egypt's food imports then, nor were there millions of free-spending tourists to be paying, nor... Edit: Okay, perhaps Egypt had replaced many of its wheat fields with cotton fields by the 1930's, and was buying food with the cotton money. The British cotton industry might have loved that...but "massive food imports paid for with a cash crop" is a dangerous strategy to play long-term, or on a national scale. And Egypt threw off the last of the British yoke in the mid-1950's.

BasilPH 5y ago

She talks about this further down in the thread, making it her main point: > Again, specific places are facing EXTREMELY REAL wheat supply problems. MENA usually sources from Ukraine. Switching supply chains to India & other sources takes extra time, & if they're further away from India and Ukraine, it takes longer for supplies to get there. and > To solve that problem, we gotta start with being clear on what the problem IS! > We haven't! We decided it's a wheat shortage, not a shipping shortage. > So investors panicked, drove up the price of wheat, & made it even harder for these places to get new import shipments launched

dustymcp 5y ago

That is ironic given they where the grain suppliers of ancient rome? [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae

xbar 5y ago
Why is it no longer possible for Egypt to grow its own wheat?
- OwlsParlay 5y ago
  They do, but their population has also ballooned far past what their own agriculture can supply.
- senortumnus 5y ago
  Slightly informed guess is that the highly productive but water-constrained farmland of the nile valley is better used for value crops, like fresh fruits and vegetable, than a staple such as wheat which is more cheaply grown elsewhere. Edit: there’s a great writeup about “hoop” style greenhouse farming there and how productive and water efficient it is… but the article escapes me presently Edit2: ah! Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/dining/norwich-meadows-farm-vegetables.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/dining/norwich-meadows-fa...
- denni9th 5y ago
  Egypt is mostly desert, the only arable land is on the banks of the Nile.
  - screenbreakout 5y ago
    While I was there this winter, I saw huge new plantations of dates? or palm (oil)? in the western desert sucking up the underground aquifers....fields with cows grazing there... also they're probably growing wheat....doesn't look sustainable but what do I know about the politics of economic corruption.... bread is dirt cheap, it being a bit more expensive might lead them to improve their diet somewhat... I mean their dates are fabulous...

gumby 5y ago

It sure does and the article explains it (it’s a transport issue not a supply issue, as the growth in wheat production this year will exceed the shortfall).

chewz 5y ago

Egypt - arable land 2.9 pct (more or less constant from 1961). Population - 105 milion (1961 - 26 milion). https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/egypt-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/egypt-populat... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.ZS?locations=EG https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.ZS?location...

lolinder 5y ago

It makes a big difference everywhere else, though. I personally know people in the US who are buying large quantities of wheat and other food in preparation for the pending food crisis. They expect food prices in general to go through the roof because 1/4 of the world's wheat has suddenly gone missing. While there will be famines because of this war, if Sarah Taber's numbers are accurate then the reporting within the United States has been horribly irresponsible, and it's important to call it out and spread the real numbers.

ngold 5y ago

On a side tangent, wasn't Egypt the bread basket of rome? What happened there? Did the Nile dry up?

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