Beyond Mathematical Odds - Food, Grains, and the coming container tsunami
It is gonna be biblical
The theme for this entire piece is coming to terms with hard choices, and how some nations and politicians are, and some are not. And the massive supply shock the world is about to experience.
Sweden’s Biggest Solar Park Blocked on Risks to Food Supply
European Energy’s planned 168MW solar site thrown into doubt
Local county says farm land for food outweighs energy needs
Privately-owned European Energy A/S had hoped to build a 168 megawatt site on pasture in Svedberga, Southern Sweden. But the Skane County Administrative Board ruled that the planned solar panels would limit the agricultural use of the land.
“Our judgment is that production of food outweighs energy in this case,” Helena Holmgren, who runs the unit handling the application, said in a statement.
Denmark-based European Energy now plans to appeal the decision at Sweden’s environmental court, Ted Bergdahl, a spokesperson for the company, said by telephone. The company “believes that large-scale produced solar power is necessary to achieve national climate goals,” it said in a separate statement.
Within the argument of some of my newer posts, governments, backed and influenced by private interests (WEF, the ESG crowd) are pressuring governments into a fragile, energy catastrophic path towards expensive, unreliable energy, at the cost of food security.
The reason for sharing this is so people are aware, and start fighting back, because misguided “climate” policies are doing only one thing. Fueling the current mess we see ourselves getting into. As the trend around here, I already shared some governments (like the UK) paying farmers to not develop their land, or outright sell it, so they build wind, and solar farms instead. In a decade that will be riffled with food inflation, and lower yield…
As an update to the corn situation, the Brazil drought only gets worse. And now other experts and C-suites from major companies say the situation both in the US, and in Brazil, warrants worry because it will affect the prices of corn globally. Corn is not just food but feeds for animals, fuel, and a dozen other uses.
Brazil is the third-largest corn producer in the world (following No. 1 U.S. and No. 2 China). McNew says the Brazilian corn crop is the main global supplier between now and the U.S. harvest this fall.
This could affect both short-term corn prices and medium-term food inflation.
This leads us to the next topic at hand, Spain plans to buy its grains from South America, attempting to protect its own industry from the fallout of the war in Ukraine.
The Mediterranean country, a continental agriculture powerhouse, is exploiting the temporary lifting of a European Union ban on importing crops with traces of herbicides from markets including Argentina and Brazil.
Argentina is facing protests from its farmers, the president chose to halt exports to curb internal food prices, which is hurting the farmers, among taxes. This is happening elsewhere, as I covered for weeks now. Indonesia, and palm oil, the list goes on.
I said months ago, that countries would break EU rules before collapsing themselves, as companies will keep themselves alive, and not harm their own country economies. Some already opened bank accounts with Gazprom, and countries that refused to do so face the hard reality, in which their gas supply was cut by Russia. Even some firms inside Germany are ready to meet the demand to pay in rubbles.
For the foreseeable future, it will be a battle between unelected rulers, the EU autocrats, and politicians who actually think about what is best for their people, and their countries.
Europe Seeks to Draw Tougher Line on Russian Gas Threat
Hungary says it has allowed payments to be converted to rubles
EU states ask Commission for more clarity on the rules
Soaring food prices threaten to stoke 'unrest' in Africa, IMF warns
Sub-Saharan Africa faces new shocks regarding food security and little space to maneuver, says the IMF in a stark warning to the international community.
Not exactly news for my readers, just a parts confirmation bias, parts “others are seeing what we saw weeks ago”, this is also a long term trend, as every possible negative trend that could align in Africa, did. Locust plague almost every year, adding the one this year impacting the most, because of weather, fertilizer, and fuel costs, supply chain disruption, and civil unrest in certain regions, and now drought threatens to cause mass starvation, hitting up to 20 million people.
"This is a shock that hits in a laser light, directed at the poorest," he said.
"Fuel price increases feed into transportation costs, and people providing goods and services will raise their prices because they are now facing higher input costs," he said.
Food prices monitored by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) surged 12.6 percent between February and March, reaching their highest levels since the index was launched in 1990, the UN's agency said on April 8.
The quote above doesn’t take into account all the variables I just described, the situation in the entire African continent and the Middle East will severely impact the world in the next 2-4 years.
A portion of these people will need aid, from countries that can’t afford to aid, and another portion will just move elsewhere (Europe).
Not helpful that Goya CEO, the biggest Hispanic-owned food company in the US (among the 400 biggest companies) told interviews that the world sees itself on the precipice of a food crisis. Not the first CEO from a food company to state this, won’t be the last, and they are in the position, to tell the truth.
US egg factory roasts alive 5.3m chickens in avian flu cull – then fires almost every worker
Laborers worked for a month disposing of birds killed in a gruesomely inhumane manner. Then they found they too were disposable.
Labourers at the one of the world’s largest egg factories arrived at the plant in Rembrandt, Iowa, early one morning in March to discover they were about to work themselves out of a job.
As they gathered at the huge barns housing stacks of caged hens, the workers were told to forget about their usual routine of collecting eggs and feeding the birds. Overnight, the factory had begun slaughtering more than 5 million chickens using a gruesome killing method after detecting a single case of avian influenza. Even supervisors were assigned to the arduous task of dragging dead hens out of packed cages as Rembrandt Enterprises raced to contain the spread of the virus, amid the largest bird flu outbreak in the US in seven years.
I have covered this subject extensively, and this is but merely keeping up the trend. In a mere month, the total number of culled poultry is upwards of 20 million, and as I forecasted, and warned most readers, egg prices would be affected, and now they will, since the biggest egg producer in the US, just culled all of its chickens, and closed it, for how long, nobody knows.
The next subject requires further reading of my previous post, in case you missed it or otherwise don’t recall it.
And especially the second.
Global Supply Chain Crisis Flares Up Again Where It All Began
Ports are already snarled, with the $22 trillion trade in global goods facing months of severe disruption.
China’s stringent rules to curb Covid-19 are about to unleash another wave of summer chaos on supply chains between Asia, the U.S. and Europe.
Even if the virus is reined in, the disruptions will ripple globally — and extend through the year — as bunched-up cargo vessels start sailing again.“We expect a bigger mess than last year,” said Jacques Vandermeiren, the chief executive officer of the Port of Antwerp, Europe’s second-busiest for container volume, in an interview. “It will have a negative impact, and a big negative impact, for the whole of 2022.”
China accounts for about 12% of global trade and Covid restrictions have idled factories and warehouses, slowed truck deliveries and exacerbated container logjams.
In the “coming supply shock” I wrote about the damage that the lockdowns in China would set off, and not even in my worst forecasting, did I imagine it would last this long, to the extent that it is affecting even the Apple supply chain, the factories producing their electronics, shut down a few days ago. Even Intel is uncertain about its supply chain. It is fairly easier to visualize complex information, that to understand the writing, worse when it comes from myself, since I avoid telling you what to think, and want people to reach their own conclusions.
But here it is.
The supply shock in the American summer will be felt far, and wide, globally. US inventories are high right now and can be maintained for a while, but coming the Summer, if inventories are low, and you are relying on the ports to get materials, or products, you will miss deadlines, projects, and get impacted heavily.
Longer queues of vessels seen off China’s coast aren’t helping. The line of cargo carriers has jumped after Shanghai, home to the world’s largest container port, initiated a city-wide lockdown late last month to combat Covid-19 cases. The total number of container ships in port and off the hub’s shared anchorage with nearby Ningbo stood at 230 as of last Wednesday, a 35% increase from this time last year, according to Bloomberg shipping data.
Below is the current port status in the region. Trucks are NOT moving, with only 20% of them working in Shanghai (I recommend you to read that entire piece on trucks because it pertains to the US truckers too). And restarting a factory floor is not like restarting a computer, or mobile, it takes that, and a lot of these factories face one of the biggest hurdles. Raw material/material inventory, you can track down the communication on social media between some westerns, and managers inside the factories, and a lot of them don’t have enough materials to keep producing once they restart the factories.
There is no clue, anywhere, how well things will move once the lockdown measures are eased, and truckers and cargo can move.
The pileups in Europe are just as severe or worse, compounded by the proximity to the war in Ukraine. Key ports such as Rotterdam, Hamburg, Antwerp and three in the U.K. are working at or above capacity, which means they’re already struggling to accept more containers because they don’t have space to store them.
By the e-mails subscribers use, I know a sizable portion are farmers, work in the supply chain, own their own businesses such as markets, or are from telecom (these are half of my subscribers, the other half I suspect are people interested in Covid, I appreciate you all, even though the Covid subs should pay attention to these matters to).
I lost count of how many times I said this, but you should hedge accordingly, and prepare your business for these shocks. Expect a delay on delivery of your overseas items of, at least 8 weeks, maybe 10. When that massive wave of Asian cargo gets off China, they will flood ports in Europe and the US. So, to reiterate once more, the next supply shock will pale in comparison to the last one. And this time it is not a matter of (in)competence, works, logistical capacity, or anything besides that it will be literally too much cargo.
Beijing braces for COVID lockdown with mass testing and panic buying
Beijing is bracing for a potential lockdown in the face of a new COVID outbreak. Residents are stocking up on supplies, and authorities have ordered 20 million people to take three mandatory tests this week.
Why it matters: Sticking with President Xi Jinping's zero-COVID strategy effectively means leaving the entire country indefinitely on the edge of lockdown.
Between the lines: Xi is so personally tied to the zero-COVID approach — which he publicly defended last week— that some experts think he simply can’t be seen to abandon it.
What's next: As the rest of the world learns to live with the virus, it may also have to learn to live with the ripple effects of China's very different approach on supply chains and economic growth.
Now we can watch population dynamics among the biggest country in population numbers in the world, with the most centralized government, and the political suicide of someone who was on the verge of conquering the West and let hubris take the best of him.
There is now extensive talk among many industries, and supply chain companies about actual reshoring. Painful, but now feasible because of the inflationary trends, disruptions, and everything else.
Maybe producing less, closer to home, with people consuming less because of the state of the global economy, reshoring won’t be as financially painful, and profits can remain almost the same, with tight margins that keep you afloat.
Internet down in multiple cities across France after suspected sabotage
Underground cables which feed major cities are believed to have been cut overnight
"The attacks took place overnight at 4:00 am (0200 GMT). Our teams have been at work since this morning," said a spokesman for Free, the worst-affected internet and mobile phone service provider.
In a message on Twitter, the company referred to "multiple malicious acts" targeting its cables, which led to outages and slow connections for many clients.
Sharing this for the mere curiosity, and for attention. Doing attacks like this is easy, and feasible, it is not that hard to find these places. I wonder if this was an actual attack, or someone pissed that Macron own… anyway, something to bear in mind.
Here is a small list of the biggest cyberattacks so far this year too. Add the current wave of ransomware hitting governments to the list, Costa Rica being the last of them so far.
I feel the post is big enough, and complex so I will stop here, it is enough information for the reader to absorb and reflect upon (hopefully act upon).
Not an excuse, but new posts might take a little longer (up to next Tuesday), besides one or two short ones, dealing with bureaucracy, and other matters.
You can buy me a coffee whenever you feel like it.
Deep appreciation for all the supporters!
looks like I picked a good year to raise a few ducks for family egg consumption.
unless the Man decides to violate my property line and off the little feathery protein factories as potential health hazards, we'll have enough eggs to give some away or trade.
good year to have preemptively bought bulk grain, too.
the normals don't understand the desire to be prepared as much as possible for self sufficiency, I don't understand their point of view trusting the System to remain a reliable supplier of /anything/ (except tyranny and propaganda, which the Man never seems to run out of.)
Here's the USDA's APHIS page showing number of birds on confirmed infected premises. Breakdown by state and flock size. The number is past 35 million now in 29 affected states. 247 flocks confirmed to have some degree of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in them.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalhealth/animal-disease-information/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-2022/2022-hpai-commercial-backyard-flocks