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Food companies and governments must come together immediately to change the world’s agricultural practices or risk “destroying the planet”, according to the sponsors of a report by some of the largest food and farming businesses released on Thursday.

Photograph: Jeff McIntosh/AP© Provided by The Guardian

The report, from a task force within the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), a network of global CEOs focused on climate issues established by King Charles III, is being released days before the start of the United Nation’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt.

Many of the world’s largest food and agricultural businesses have championed sustainable agricultural practices in recent years. Regenerative farming practices, which prioritize cutting greenhouse gas emissions, soil health and water conservation, now cover 15% of croplands.

But the pace of change has been “far too slow”, the report finds, and must triple by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping temperature rises under 1.5C, a level that if breached, scientists argue, will unleash even more devastating climate change on the planet.

The report is signed by Bayer, Mars, McCain Foods, McDonald’s, Mondelez, Olam, PepsiCo, Waitrose and others. They represent a potent political and corporate force, impacting the food supply chain around the world. They are also, according to critics, some of those most responsible for climate mismanagement with one calling the report “smoke and mirrors” and unlikely to address the real crisis.

Food production is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity and a number of the signatories have been accused of environmental misdeeds and “greenwashing”…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Most productive NSW agricultural shire counts hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses

October 29, 2022

Most productive NSW agricultural shire counts hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses

Crops on the verge of harvest have been wiped out.(Supplied: Rabbit Hop Films)

New South Wales’s peak farming body says the damage bill for wheat losses alone in the state’s flood-hit north-west will surpass $150 million.

Parts of Moree, Gunnedah, Dubbo and Moama have been evacuated as more than 140 flood warnings remain across the state.

Agronomists say the grain-growing hub of the north-west is expected to have “conservatively” lost more than 120,000 hectares of wheat that was nearly ready to harvest.

The region also boasts large barley and canola outputs and is in the summer planting window for crops such as cotton and sorghum.

The NSW Farmers Association is calling on the federal government to bolster flood support payments in Labor’s first budget in this term of government.

The lobby group’s Grains Committee chair, Justin Everitt said the dollar value of the wheat damage is on top of approximately $42 million farmers spent to grow the crop, in a year where input costs have been extraordinarily high.

He said crops are “now drowning beneath floodwater” and may be a “complete write-off” if paddocks don’t dry out soon.

“You spend all this money preparing your paddocks, sowing your crops, fertilising and spraying them, only to see them wiped out a couple weeks before harvest. It’s heartbreaking,” Mr Everitt said.

“Farmers know they’re taking a bit of a gamble when they’re planting a crop, but this ongoing wet weather with flood after flood after flood is just unbelievable.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Farm grade diesel shortage could threaten new crops

October 25, 2022

Farm grade diesel shortage could threaten new crops

DOVER, Fla. — A tax-free diesel fuel shortage for farmers in Central Florida is threatening crops and could send prices for agriculture commodities skyrocketing by early next year.

Farmers are reporting a shortage of diesel fuel from suppliers at the port, which is leading them to fuel up at local pumps in competition with the general public, and paying full price per gallon of fuel.

What You Need To Know

- Diesel fuel shortage for farmers in Central Florida could threaten crops

- Farmers are reporting a shortage of diesel fuel from suppliers at the port

Diesel fuel is heavily used by farmers to help power water pump houses to water crops

“Every time our fuel supplier goes to the port they are being told that the allocations aren’t there for them,” said Matt Parke with Parkesdale Farms in Dover. “So we are really having to go to different gas stations to get regular road diesel out here.”

Diesel fuel is heavily used by farmers to help power water pump houses that get water onto newly planted crops.

Without diesel fuel, Parke says new crops could be at risk.

“If they run short and we are in the middle of trying to live these plants in, you know, they are going to die,” said Parke. “And we will have 50 to 80 percent loss.”

Standing next to a bagged diesel pump, Bennett Station owner Darwish Elhajji says he’s seeing the struggle over the fuel shortage daily.

Bennett Station is a bulk supplier for the kind tax-free diesel farmers in Plant City use for everything from water pump houses to tractors and other field equipment.

“Any negative effect to the crop in this city will affect everyone, it will be a trickle down,” Elahjji said.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Food Crisis Of 2023 Is Going To Be Far Worse Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine

October 20, 2022

The Food Crisis Of 2023 Is Going To Be Far Worse Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine

I am trying to sound the alarm about this as loudly as I can. The global food crisis just continues to intensify, and things are going to get really bad in 2023. As you will see below, two-thirds of European fertilizer production has already been shut down, currency problems are causing massive headaches for poor nations that need to import food, global weather patterns continue to be completely crazy, and the bird flu is killing millions upon millions of chickens and turkeys all over the planet. On top of everything else, the war in Ukraine is going to restrict the flow of agricultural and fertilizer exports from that part of the world for a long time to come, because there is no end to the war in sight. In essence, we are facing a “perfect storm” for global food production, and that “perfect storm” is only going to get worse in the months ahead.

Global hunger has been on the rise for years, and the UN World Food Program is warning that we are heading for “yet another year of record hunger”…

The world is at risk of yet another year of record hunger as the global food crisis continues to drive yet more people into worsening levels of severe hunger, warns the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in a call for urgent action to address the root causes of today’s crisis ahead of World Food Day on October 16.

The global food crisis is a confluence of competing crises – caused by climate shocks, conflict and economic pressures – that has pushed the number of severely hungry people around the world from 282 million to 345 million in just the first months of 2022…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Look Before you Eat

October 19, 2022

Look Before you Eat

Preface. This post is a book review of Be Wilson’s Swindled. From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats.

With likely world peak oil production in 2018, the price of food will rise relentlessly, since fossil fuels are used to fertilize, plant, harvest, distribute, package, cook, and refrigerate food, and oil is the master resource that makes food and all other goods possible through transportation.

So how to cope with future food shortages and improve your health? Whole grains, corn, lentils and dried beans not only last 10 to 25 years if stored properly, they’re cheap and healthy. Consider milling your own grains, and though this is a bit out of date, here’s a piece I wrote up for my book “Crunch” on how to do this: Which Grain Mill is best?

Energy decline will make all goods more and more expensive and scarce, so maintaining your health is a key strategy to weather the long emergency ahead. There is no plan to cope with the energy crisis yet, for many reasons.

Wilson makes it clear clear that cheating has always gone on and always will, especially in societies with laissez-faire governments who prefer promoting commerce to protecting their citizens. In the United States and Britain, there is very little testing of chemicals added to food and most chemical additives don’t need to be listed on labels.

Food in many nations is sold on a “buyer beware” basis. I personally can’t afford to test rats over decades with elaborate chemistry sets at home, so I try to cook from scratch with whole grains, vegetables, fruit, etc. And buy organic produce that are the most pesticide laden like peaches, strawberries, apples, and so on, see: Dirty Dozen – Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce – EWG

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Food security – life is changing

October 14, 2022

It seems hard to comprehend, living as we do in the twenty first century, that food security would ever be something we would need to concern ourselves with. But it’s a thing now. It’s a sign of the times when a cargo ship full of grain sailing across the Black Sea becomes a major international news story. And you’d better believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg; the impact of war, as terrible as that is, is nothing compared to the effect that climate change is going to have in terms of our food security.

One thing that we really must be doing, both in terms of preventing the worst-case scenario of climate change and also helping us cope with the inevitable food security troubles we will face in the future, is to create resilient local food economies. And for qualification of that statement, should it be required, simply cast your mind back to the lockdown in March 2020 and remember how local food enterprises up and down the country not only continued to supply their customers, but quickly scaled up to meet the surge in demand, while supermarket shelves were bare for weeks.

Such local food economies would be characterised by an abundance of independent food enterprises: farmers and market gardeners who grow food specially for the local market, artisanal processing businesses who lovingly add value to locally grown food, and independent shops and restaurants which sell local food. And more to the point, when a local food system has taken root, it is possible to coordinate the supply-chain between these local enterprises according to ‘circular economy’ principles, and dramatically reduce the environmental impact of food in comparison to the industrialised system currently in place.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 4

October 12, 2022

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 4

How Much Food Can You Fit?

It’s a long article. I’m trying to distract you with cute Corgi pictures.

A Word on Self-Sufficiency

Let’s talk about the big question of the year: “How much do I grow to feed my family for the year?” It gets asked, and then for some reason that question leads to the talk and belief in self-sufficiency, and then “self-sufficiency” becomes a buzz word and gets batted around all over the place, so let me clear the air on that.

Here’s the thing — and sorry — we normal, everyday people with everyday yards CAN’T grow enough to not need food from another source, and you can’t grow everything you need, either. I’m not even sure that people with large acreages can do it. I doubt it. It would take a huge investment and a ginormous skill set.

For us mere mortals, either we don’t have the land for it, we don’t have the skills for it, we’re not in the right area to grow something, or we don’t have the money for it (or all of the above). And some of these things apply to people with large acreages as well.

Let’s just think about it for a minute. Can you grow:

Sugar? Cocoa? Coffee? Tea? Enough of anything to press it for cooking oil? Or enough animals to provide you with lard or butter to use in lieu of cooking oils? Can you grow enough wheat or barley or oats (or all three) to feed your family on TOP of all the other things? Can you grow enough wheat or barley or oats or corn to feed your livestock, if you have it?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 3

October 7, 2022

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 3

Planning to Plant the Plot

When do we plant?

Vegetable gardens in this country are largely seen as a “summer thing”, and I believe this is because the crops people associate with vegetable gardens are mainly summer growing. These are most of the crops that we discussed in the last article. However, if we adjust what we are growing, we also have to adjust when we grow it, because not everything grows well in summer, and needs the cooler weather of spring or fall instead. This way, the summer-only garden really becomes a spring, summer, and fall garden. This is a far better use of our space and time, because the more time the garden is in use means that more food can be produced. Good news, if you think about it.

What can we plant in spring, then? We can plant things such as:

Onions (bulbing),Peas, Potatoes, Cabbage, Kale, Carrots, Swiss Chard, Radishes, Lettuce, Spinach

In summer, we can plant the “heavy hitters”, such as:

Tomatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Peppers, Summer Squash, Winter Squash, Pumpkins, Melons, Celery, Cucumbers, Beans, Eggplant, Corn, Basil, Cilantro, Dill

In fall, we can plant things similar to the spring, such as:

Peas, Cabbage, Kale, Carrots, Lettuce, Spinach, Radishes, Onions (not bulbing onions, though, bunching onions instead), Garlic-this stays in over the winter, Turnips

These are not exhaustive lists. Any seed company worth their salt (and there are a number of really good ones) will tell you which crops do best in which season. These are examples so you can see that there are a number of things you can grow and three seasons in which to do so. Doing so, however, is a bit of a ballet…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Global Food Supply Crises May Worsen Due to Poor US Harvest

September 23, 2022

Farmer harvests corn in Princeton, Ind., on Oct. 11, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Global Food Supply Crises May Worsen Due to Poor US Harvest

U.S. agriculture has been facing a poor harvest this year, aggravating the global food supply crisis, industry executives have said.

The supply of food worldwide has been tight, since Russia’s war in Ukraine cut off vital shipments of resources needed to make fertilizer and grain products from the region.

Several high-level executives from big agricultural firms such as Bayer, Corteva, Archer Daniels Midland, and Bunge, told The Wall Street Journal that it will take at least two more years of good harvests in North and South America to ease the supply pressures.

“The current market expectation is that global grain and oilseeds markets need two consecutive normal crop years to stabilize global supplies,” said Chuck Magro, chief executive of Corteva, at an investor presentation this week.

This year’s grain harvest has fallen below normal yields in the West, hindering efforts to restock global crop supplies he explained.

The United States and South America, two of the world’s major crop exporters, faced persistent drought conditions this summer.

The hot summer worsened drought conditions in states throughout the U.S. Grain Belt, which saw a major reduction in the harvest due to lack of water and a wet spring planting season earlier in the year.

The Agriculture Department announced on Sept. 12, that it had lowered its nationwide corn production estimates to 13.9 billion bushels.

This is 3 percent lower than its projections in August, about 8 percent lower than the total amount harvested last year.

Projections for soybean production estimates in September were down 3 percent from August, down slightly from 2021.

Maintaining a Food Truce

Global recession fears have also weighed on food commodity markets and the prolonged conflict in Ukraine has not helped matters.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe’s Natural Gas Shortage Could Trigger A Food Crisis

September 14, 2022

Europe’s Natural Gas Shortage Could Trigger A Food Crisis

Energy crises impact nearly every aspect of our lives, and that is particularly true of food markets, with food production next year expected to be severely threatened.
About 70 percent of the cost of fertilizer production is solely the price of natural gas, and as the price of energy soars, the cost of making and moving food is increasing alongside it.
At the same time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and threats from Putin that Russia may alter grain export routes have only added to uncertainty in food markets.

The problem with an energy crisis is that it’s actually an everything crisis. In a world where virtually every industry relies on energy in some form, runaway inflation is an inevitability. This phenomenon is not news – you’ve been experiencing it for the better part of two years now. But while global governments are using every tool in their kits to curb the rising inflation rates, there’s far less they can do about the coming food shortage.

For months, the agricultural industry has been warning the rest of the world that next year’s food production is severely threatened, as the fertilizer industry is in shambles. Industrial NPK fertilizers (so named for their makeup of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium oxide), are heavily reliant on natural gas supplies. About 70 percent of the cost of fertilizer production is solely the price of natural gas, which is used in liberal amounts to make the ammonia phosphate slurries that turn into fertilizer. Indeed, according to CRU Group, European fertilizer producers in the region are currently losing approximately $2,000 for every ton of ammonia produced. So as Russia has stemmed and then indefinitely stopped the flow of natural gas into Europe, sending gas prices through the roof, the continent’s fertilizer sector has halted as much as 70 percent of its production capacity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why are farmers in the Netherlands protesting?

September 3, 2022

Blamed for much of the climate crisis, biodiversity decline, water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, farmers and farming are at the centre of a worldwide debate which is only gaining heat. This argument has come to a head in the Netherlands, where farmers have been involved in high-conflict protests, blocking roads with tractors and farm waste, and setting fire to bales of hay. Police response to protests has been reportedly heavy handed – even shooting at protestors.

Why are they protesting? Dutch courts have insisted on a 50% (up to 70% in some areas) reduction in nitrogen pollution by 2030, to be achieved by drastic reductions in livestock numbers. Farmers feel singled out, and the Government has taken a U-turn on its previous support of intensive farming.

The problem

For decades, in the Netherlands, government policy has promoted the intensification of the livestock sector, and a lack of intervention in the market has meant that prices have been pushed down, leaving ever-greater intensification as the only means to stay afloat for many. The Netherlands have Europe’s highest livestock density, with 3.8 ‘livestock units’ (a measure of animal numbers) per hectare of agricultural area, which, being a small country, leaves it with a huge issue when it comes to the volume of waste these animals produce. When manure and urine mix, ammonia, a compound of nitrogen, is released, and can damage natural habitats and result in air pollution. While the focus of much of the coverage has been on dairy farms, pig farms in the Netherlands, in particular, are also a major source of nitrogen and phosphate pollution, with much of the nitrogen coming in the form of high protein soybean meal, often imported from recently deforested areas in South America.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wave Of European Ammonia Plant Closures To Exacerbate Food Crisis

August 28, 2022

Wave Of European Ammonia Plant Closures To Exacerbate Food Crisis

A wave of European ammonia-plant shutdowns due to soaring natural gas prices has resulted in a devastating fertilizer crunch, worsening by the week, with as much as 70% of production offline.

“Ammonia prices, though volatile, rose 15% in 3Q and could climb higher as Europe’s record gas prices curtail output and send ammonia producers to the global market in search of replacement supplies to run upgrade facilities — with winter still around the corner,” Bloomberg Intelligence’s Alexis Maxwell wrote in a note.

As of Friday, 70% of capacity is offline across the continent, according to Fertilizers Europe, representing top regional producers.

“The current crisis begs for a swift and decisive action from EU and national policymakers for both energy and fertilizer market,” Jacob Hansen, director general of Fertilizers Europe, said in a statement.

Producers from Norway’s Yara International ASA to CF Industries to Borealis AG recently reduced or halted production because European NatGas prices hit a record high of 343 euros per megawatt hour, making it uneconomical to operate.

“We confirm we are reducing and stopping production of some fertilizer plants in the different EU sites and this for economic reasons,” a spokesperson for Borealis AG said.

Europe’s benchmark NatGas price soared nearly a third this week as Russian supplies to Europe via Nord Stream 1 pipeline have been reduced to 20% over the summer and face a temporary halt on Aug. 31 for three days.

The region’s fertilizer industry association warned the energy crisis is rippling across many industries and could heavily impact the food industry.

“We are extremely concerned that as prices of natural gas keep increasing, more plants in Europe will be forced to close.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Water Worries and Drought Tolerant Plants

August 24, 2022

Water Worries and Drought Tolerant Plants

A Summer Update from Shipka

This summer has been incredibly hot and dry, and even some of the older and more established trees have looked under strain. With increasing periods of hot and dry weather and pressure on both the mains water supply and our perennial source from the river, designing our gardens to be as resilient as possible seems the best way forward. During this post, we’ll be looking at the challenges we’ve faced this season with our usual water supply and take a look at some useful drought tolerant plants that have faired well in dry and hot conditions.

Our project is located in the town of Shipka on the foothills of the Balkan mountains in central Bulgaria. As such our gardens have a gradient that means we can benefit from a gravity-fed perennial water source, a local mountain stream. The stream water can be diverted into purpose-built cement channels that run down the sides of many of the streets and under roads, making this water accessible for many households. It can also be diverted into the fields. It’s an incredible system although somewhat neglected. All of our gardens were designed to take advantage of this resource. In the image below you can see the main path of the stream through the mountain, and then the diversion created. The highlighted plot here is one of our gardens, Phronesis. There is approximately a 3m drop from the north to the south of the plot and the slope is more or less even from east to west.

The mountain stream can be diverted into the site from the north

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

European Corn Yields Expected To Plunge Amid Worst Drought In 500 Years

August 23, 2022

European Corn Yields Expected To Plunge Amid Worst Drought In 500 Years

Besides the news of record high electricity prices, a troubling new crop failure report about Europe’s upcoming harvest was published Monday. The bloc’s Monitoring Agricultural Resources forecasted corn yields could drop by nearly a fifth due to a devastating drought, according to Bloomberg.

Before we dive into the crop report, Europe’s centuries-old ‘hunger stones’ were recently revealed in the Elbe River, which runs from the mountains of Czechia through Germany to the North Sea. The stones date back to a drought in 1616 and read: “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine.” That translates to “if you see me, then weep.”

The warning on the stones appears correct because the new crop report forecasts corn yields will drop 16% below the five-year average. That compares with a July forecast of an 8% decline.

The plunge in corn output could result in further food inflation. It will boost feed costs for livestock herds, adding to even more woes for farmers who are plagued with elevated diesel and fertilizer prices.

“Water and heat stress periods partly coincided with the sensitive flowering stage and grain filling,” according to the crop monitoring report. “This resulted in irreversibly lost yield potential.”

In late August, about half of Europe is under a drought warning. Crops, power plants, industry, and fish populations have been devastated by the heat and lack of rainfall. The European Commission Joint Research Centre warned earlier this month the ongoing drought is the worst in 500 years as vast amounts of farmland turn to dust.

Heading into the fall, western and central Europe face a very high risk of dry conditions over the next three months that could result in water shortages.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection

August 17, 2022

Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection

Abstract

Atmospheric soot loadings from nuclear weapon detonation would cause disruptions to the Earth’s climate, limiting terrestrial and aquatic food production. Here, we use climate, crop and fishery models to estimate the impacts arising from six scenarios of stratospheric soot injection, predicting the total food calories available in each nation post-war after stored food is consumed. In quantifying impacts away from target areas, we demonstrate that soot injections larger than 5 Tg would lead to mass food shortages, and livestock and aquatic food production would be unable to compensate for reduced crop output, in almost all countries. Adaptation measures such as food waste reduction would have limited impact on increasing available calories. We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia—underlining the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war.

Main

Extraordinary events such as large volcanic eruptions or nuclear war could cause sudden global climate disruptions and affect food security. Global volcanic cooling caused by sulfuric acid aerosols in the stratosphere has resulted in severe famines and political instability, for example, after the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland¹ or the 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia^2,3. For a nuclear war, the global cooling would depend on the yields of the weapons, the number of weapons and the targets, among other atmospheric and geographic factors. In a nuclear war, bombs targeted on cities and industrial areas would start firestorms, injecting large amounts of soot into the upper atmosphere, which would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet^4,5,6. Such soot loadings would cause decadal disruptions in Earth’s climate^7,8,9, which would impact food production systems on land and in the oceans…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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