3 ms·

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

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.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  Most world grain is shipped short distances within countries (by rail, truck, canal, ..) and consumed locally. Only a small proportion is shipped internationally, and usually the shortest possible routes are picked (because that is cheaper). Entirely taking out Ukrainian grain shipments is not a small sliver of the total amount of long-distance grain shipping, but instead requires a significant increase in the total deadweight-ton-miles. We are talking about taking 10%+ of international wheat/corn/barley trade and making it travel 3–6x further than it otherwise would, in an industry that usually runs on thin capacity margins. (Disclaimer: I am not an expert and have not done a detailed calculation.) That is a potential logistical nightmare. Hopefully smart people with the power to make large temporary changes are working on ameliorating the pain and keeping everyone fed.
ineedasername 5y ago
Thanks for the added detail-- I wasn't aware of details specific to the Ukraine <-> Egypt supply chain, and this demonstrates extremely well the difficulties of shifting supply sources.
KarlKemp 5y ago
If anyone else is wondering, the largest ships carry 300,000 DTW, which is 300,000,000 kg each of which has 3400 kCal. Daily caloric intake of 2,000 may be suitable average, meaning that one ship can supply all energy needs for 1.5 million people and one year. (3700 * 300000 * 1000) / (365 * 2000)
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Keep in mind that grains are not only used for human consumption though. It's also used for animals. Egypt has 10M cattle alone [1] and a 1,000lb animal needs roughly 7x the calories as a person. [2] So that same largest cargo ship will only feed about ~200,000 cattle, requiring 50 such ships to feed the cattle population. They produce about 1.8 billion heads of poultry [3], and in total only about 1/3 of their animal feed requirements are produced domestically [1]. Animal feed appears to be in a different category from other grain imports for human consumption, probably because it really is a separate product containing a mixture of grains and nutrients from other sources. Unfortunately though, much of it is also imported from Ukraine [4] which has banned all exports of grains for now, and it's probably a reasonable assumption that this will include grains used in animal feed, since the issue is the food security of their own people. Eqypt is going to need a lot more newly-sourced grains or grain-based products, a large # of container ships full of it. [1] https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Livestock%20and%20Products%20Annual_Cairo_Egypt_09-01-2021.pdf https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadRepo... [2] https://cals.arizona.edu/forageandgrain/sites/cals.arizona.edu.forageandgrain/files/az9523.pdf https://cals.arizona.edu/forageandgrain/sites/cals.arizona.e... [3] https://crimsonpublishers.com/cras/pdf/CRAS.000502.pdf https://crimsonpublishers.com/cras/pdf/CRAS.000502.pdf [4] https://www.feednavigator.com/Article/2016/09/19/USDA-Egyptian-livestock-feed-costs-high-despite-low-global-commodity-pricing https://www.feednavigator.com/Article/2016/09/19/USDA-Egypti...
  - pixl97 5y ago
    I mean, that is just an advertisement to reduce meat production and focus on starch based calories for humans rather than supplying to inefficient meat production.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

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.
jacobolus 5y ago
Most world grain is shipped short distances within countries (by rail, truck, canal, ..) and consumed locally. Only a small proportion is shipped internationally, and usually the shortest possible routes are picked (because that is cheaper). Entirely taking out Ukrainian grain shipments is not a small sliver of the total amount of long-distance grain shipping, but instead requires a significant increase in the total deadweight-ton-miles. We are talking about taking 10%+ of international wheat/corn/barley trade and making it travel 3–6x further than it otherwise would, in an industry that usually runs on thin capacity margins. (Disclaimer: I am not an expert and have not done a detailed calculation.) That is a potential logistical nightmare. Hopefully smart people with the power to make large temporary changes are working on ameliorating the pain and keeping everyone fed.

ineedasername 5y ago

Thanks for the added detail-- I wasn't aware of details specific to the Ukraine <-> Egypt supply chain, and this demonstrates extremely well the difficulties of shifting supply sources.

KarlKemp 5y ago

If anyone else is wondering, the largest ships carry 300,000 DTW, which is 300,000,000 kg each of which has 3400 kCal. Daily caloric intake of 2,000 may be suitable average, meaning that one ship can supply all energy needs for 1.5 million people and one year. (3700 * 300000 * 1000) / (365 * 2000)

ineedasername 5y ago
Keep in mind that grains are not only used for human consumption though. It's also used for animals. Egypt has 10M cattle alone [1] and a 1,000lb animal needs roughly 7x the calories as a person. [2] So that same largest cargo ship will only feed about ~200,000 cattle, requiring 50 such ships to feed the cattle population. They produce about 1.8 billion heads of poultry [3], and in total only about 1/3 of their animal feed requirements are produced domestically [1]. Animal feed appears to be in a different category from other grain imports for human consumption, probably because it really is a separate product containing a mixture of grains and nutrients from other sources. Unfortunately though, much of it is also imported from Ukraine [4] which has banned all exports of grains for now, and it's probably a reasonable assumption that this will include grains used in animal feed, since the issue is the food security of their own people. Eqypt is going to need a lot more newly-sourced grains or grain-based products, a large # of container ships full of it. [1] https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Livestock%20and%20Products%20Annual_Cairo_Egypt_09-01-2021.pdf https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadRepo... [2] https://cals.arizona.edu/forageandgrain/sites/cals.arizona.edu.forageandgrain/files/az9523.pdf https://cals.arizona.edu/forageandgrain/sites/cals.arizona.e... [3] https://crimsonpublishers.com/cras/pdf/CRAS.000502.pdf https://crimsonpublishers.com/cras/pdf/CRAS.000502.pdf [4] https://www.feednavigator.com/Article/2016/09/19/USDA-Egyptian-livestock-feed-costs-high-despite-low-global-commodity-pricing https://www.feednavigator.com/Article/2016/09/19/USDA-Egypti...
- pixl97 5y ago
  I mean, that is just an advertisement to reduce meat production and focus on starch based calories for humans rather than supplying to inefficient meat production.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]