6 ms·
The chart in the article does a nice job at illustrating that prices are roughly speaking back to essentially pre-pandemic levels after giant spikes. This seems
by tpmx 3y ago
The chart in the article does a nice job at illustrating that prices are roughly speaking back to essentially pre-pandemic levels after giant spikes. This seems healthy to me.
- reducesuffering 3y agoI love the tradingeconomics site for tracking commodities prices. Indeed, lumber is at pre-pandemic prices from 5 years ago https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber
- greggsy 3y agoCripes what is going on with orange juice.. there’s some seasonal patterns in the last 25 years, but the last year has just kept climbing.
- reducesuffering 3y agoNot sure. That was the lone outlier I saw too. Quick internet glance seems to implicate crop disease and Florida hurricanes dropping supplies.
- mcculley 3y agoHere in Florida, citrus greening has devastated the groves.
- eth0up 3y agoThat... and grubby land grabs, cavalier/deranged development (Lennar), and ignorant newcomers who think making a subtropical keystone ecosystem conform to their hell of previous residence is justified by exorbitant checks and brutal disregard.
- greggsy 3y agoI’m interested to understand your concerns - is there one issue that you’d be able to expand on?
- eth0up 3y agoIt would be more difficult to expound on a single issue than multiple, and usually a lack of dynamic isn't well received here on HN. I'm confident that most folks know little of Florida and care even less. My comment made reference to the reckless development occurring here (and elsewhere) by eg Lennar. The aesthetics are self explanatory, but the tangible consequences are perhaps more insidious, particularly for those coming in from elsewhere who have minimal understanding of 'natural' Florida to compare to. Florida, before retention ponds and sewage reservoirs were lobbied to qualify as substitutes, comprised of extensive wetlands. Lennar and others will grab huge tracts of land and install the antithesis of what they removed. Vast arrays of identical, shoddily constructed 'homes' stacked tightly beside themselves. The landscaping consists of hybrid grass that requires heavy maintenance and the plants are often growing in a layer of imported construction sand which requires never ending fertilization. Beyond the glorified retention ponds that pose as lakes, no efforts are made to retain any vestige of the original landscape. Wildlife is severely displaced and an alien, and I think verifiably hostile terrain, now sits beside a formerly natural terrain, which is usually scheduled for additional projects of identical quality. Considering that books are written on the subject, it's not reasonable to summarize what's happening in Florida in single comment. The subject may be easily dismissed here as trivial in the carbon tunnel vision of wondrous 'hackers', but it's very real and recognized by many. If you're young enough, you'll see the future look back in great disgust at what has been done to this state and others. If all newcomers to Florida were constrained to visit only Disneyland, they'd probably and understandably think it was an accurate representation. Lennar is Disney, without any of the cool stuff.
- ramesh31 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease Seems this is could be a direct result of warming: "The Asian form, Ca. L. asiaticus is heat tolerant. This means the greening symptoms can develop at temperatures up to 35 °C. The African form, Ca. L. africanus, and American form, Ca. L. americanus, are heat sensitive, thus symptoms only develop when the temperature is in the range 20–25 °C."
- mcculley 3y agoI don’t understand how this follows. The Asian form could develop at temperatures less than 35°C also, right?
- ramesh31 3y agoPoint being the American form is the issue in Florida. Warmer winters means more time spent at 20–25°C, increasing the overall disease burden.
- mcculley 3y agoI still don't understand how you arrive at this conclusion. I just did a quick pivot table of the data for 1901-2021 for Ft. Pierce, Florida, the region with which I am most familiar regarding the greening crisis. While the mean temperature has been increasing, the days spent between 20-25ºC seem to have no clear trend.
- bigmattystyles 3y agoAren’t some growers able to grow in Georgia now, whereas they hadn’t been able to before? I seem to recall something about that.
- HankB99 3y agoI have no idea if that's true or not, but I wonder how long it would take to establish orchards further north - time to realize it's possible and time to get the trees to production.
- hattmall 3y agoYes there are citrus groves in Georgia. I don't think it's that they hadn't previously been able to so much as the agricultural dynamics makes it more reasonable now. It may be short lived though as the solar farms seem to be the fastest growing land usage now.
- webninja 3y agoYep. However some new varieties, such as Sugarbelle Oranges are an are resistant to Citrus Greening and have won some taste tests.
- ramesh31 3y agoClimate change comes at you quick. We're well past the point of hypotheticals, and headed down the road of catastrophe.
- rgmerk 3y agoI've often idly wondered whether there is more speculative trading in orange juice than other commodities because of Trading Places[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_Places https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_Places
- Tao3300 3y agoIt's the Dukes
- hibikir 3y agoWelcome to climate change: Citrus trees take a while to bear fruit, so uncommon weather patterns lead to bad harvests. Something similar happens with Spanish olives, and with them, olive oil. Most Olive groves are not irrigated, because they historically don't need to be, and we've had two very dry years. Production is down to 50% of what it was, and irrigating isn't cheap or easy. And again, replanting isn't a sensible choice, as the trees don't mature in a season. We can plant different kinds of corn and wheat in different places as weather changes: A winter that is a little too short, and too long, and big ag will sell you a different bag to adapt to your updated planting date with minimal yield losses. But not with trees.
- tharkun__ 3y agoOr really many if not most fruits where I am. Apple picking? Better be fast. Pears? None left. Plums? You wanted plums? Same with my own cherry trees. Beautiful flowers. Looked like it would be just as good as last year's awesome harvest. Then frost at just the wrong time. I had maybe a couple handfuls of cherries. Not even enough on the trees to warrant putting up the bird netting.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoWhat is the deal with plums? I have wild plums growing all over my backyard and there's like one day a year when they're ripe but still on the tree! Otherwise they're either not ready to eat or lying on the ground.
- sdwr 3y agoThanks for reminding me to buy olive oil next time at costco
- csomar 3y agoIt's almost double. There has been some spikes in the past but the mean is like 250-300.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 3y agohmmmm... The chart doesn't show that. It has around 10% more to drop.
- artursapek 3y agoCrazy to think people were doing construction and remodeling at 3x typical lumber costs
- envsubst 3y agoThese things are always cyclical, but FOMO is a tough emotion to combat.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoLet's hope being stuck at home for a year is not a cyclical event! That's what drove a lot of it, not FOMO. Building a home office, using a kitchen multiple times a day, schooling from home...
- envsubst 3y agoThat doesn't drive people to pay 3x. What does it is the fear that prices will never come down or that this is a normal.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoIt was only 3x the cost because people had 3x the excess money.
- huytersd 3y agoNonsense. The lumber pipelines were interrupted. It was simple supply and demand unlike all this insane price gouging the grocery stores are pulling off now.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoRight - demand was up because people had more money.
- 3y ago
- jiveturkey 3y agoIt's only healthy if prices have been relatively stable for the 5 years prior to that as well. If prices were on a steady rise and then only back to pre-pandemic, this is losing ground to where they should be. However, in addition, we can see that nominal prices remain stable over multiple 5 year periods. So yes, healthy. Too bad that this very good presentation on a decent blog has such a clickbait headline. I guess that's the world we live in. Someone somewhere is going to say this is the death of lumber or other such drama, based on just the title of the post though.