Tag: fertilizer shortages

THOSE WACKY ROCKERFELLERS

Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer

Isn’t it weird how no one- not ever- speaks about Nature’s fertilizer?

Via ZeroHedge

Alarming Signs Farmers Reduce Fertilizer May Wreck Crop Yields

There is growing concern farmers worldwide are reducing chemical fertilizer, which may threaten yields come harvest time, according to Bloomberg. The repercussions could be huge: Lower yields may exacerbate the food crisis. 

There are alarming signs commercial farmers in top growing areas in the world are decreasing the use of essential nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

Revealed last week, SLC Agricola SA, one of Brazil’s largest farming operations, managing fields of soybeans, corn, and cotton fields in an area larger than the state of Delaware, will reduce the use of fertilizer by 20% and 25%.

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Global Rice Production Set To Plunge 10%, Threatening Half Of Humanity

Via ZeroHedge

Farmers in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam — the largest rice-producing countries could experience reduced output due to soaring fertilizer prices.

The International Rice Research Institute warns that harvests could plunge as much as 10% in the next season, equating to about 36 million tons of rice, or enough food to feed a half billion people, according to Bloomberg.

Chemical fertilizers, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, are the most applied nutrients for high-yielding rice cultivation. Farmers have been particularly vulnerable to soaring fertilizer prices as some have reduced the amount of nutrients to save costs. This threatens future harvests as production declines could stoke food inflation for a crop that feeds half of humanity.

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Black Swan Event? Top US Fertilizer Producer Hit With Rail Delays To Midwest

Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer

Via ZeroHedge

A fertilizer supply shock is imminent for US farmers as CF Industries Holdings, Inc. warned Thursday that rail shipments of crop nutrients would be reduced to top agricultural states, which couldn’t come at the worst time as the Northern Hemisphere spring planting season is underway.

The world’s largest fertilizer company said Union Pacific had hit it with railroad-mandated shipping reductions that would impact nitrogen fertilizers such as urea and urea ammonium nitrate shipments to Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, and California. Union Pacific told CF Industries without advance notice to reduce the volume of private cars on its railroad immediately. This means CF Industries had to decrease shipments by a whopping 20% to stay compliant.

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Two Shortages That Threaten To Absolutely Eviscerate The Global Economy In 2022

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

This was supposed to be the year that things “got back to normal”, but here we are at the end of January and things have only gotten worse.

As we move forward into February and beyond, there are two key global shortages that we are going to want to keep a very close eye on.

One of them is the rapidly growing fertilizer shortage.  A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal ominously warned that “high fertilizer prices are weighing on farmers across the developing world”…

From South America’s avocado, corn and coffee farms to Southeast Asia’s plantations of coconuts and oil palms, high fertilizer prices are weighing on farmers across the developing world, making it much costlier to cultivate and forcing many to cut back on production.

That means grocery bills could go up even more in 2022, following a year in which global food prices rose to decade highs. An uptick would exacerbate hunger—already acute in some parts of the world because of pandemic-linked job losses—and thwart efforts by politicians and central bankers to subdue inflation.

According to the International Fertilizer Development Center, exceedingly high fertilizer prices could result in a reduction of agricultural output in Africa alone “equivalent to the food needs of 100 million people”.

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