Drought: America Experiencing Biggest Disaster in History

http://rt.com/usa/news/usda-disaster...

I can only imagine how bad this will get, especially for countries dependent on US food exports.

Nice headline, but not a lot to that story (I mean this particular article) . Yeah, its bad, but we throw out corn every year. And, unlike when the Dust Bowl happened, we have better means of finding food globally. This sucks, but if we can't figure a way to sustain ourselves through a massive drought then we deserve the consequences.

Perhaps I shouldn't post first thing in the morning.

The concern isn't so much for Americans to be able to feed themselves. The US exports a ton of food. The concern is how this will affect nations that are very dependent on food from the US. When food prices skyrocketed in 2008, the effects greatly exacerbated tensions around the world and were one of the leading causes of the Arab Spring.

I hear Russia and Ukraine have both have decent crops this year, and are planning to have robust exports.

Right, I hear you, but the article really didn't touch on that. If rocketing food prices leads to revolution then I'm failing to see how this could be such a horrible thing. Yes, there will be pain and suffering, but if that's the motivation for change then so be it.

My point is there's more than just us in the world. If our global economy thing is broken then we need to find a way to fix it.

ZaneRockfist wrote:

The concern isn't so much for Americans to be able to feed themselves. The US exports a ton of food. The concern is how this will affect nations that are very dependent on food from the US. When food prices skyrocketed in 2008, the effects greatly exacerbated tensions around the world and were one of the leading causes of the Arab Spring.

Food is a global commodity. There really isn't any nation that is "very dependent" on the US for its food supply. Besides, we export a ton of agricultural products, but not all of it is actually food.

For example, our top five exports are soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton, and other animal feeds and fodder. Soybeans are mostly used for the creation of oils, livestock feeds, and, increasingly, bio-fuels. The corn we export isn't really fit for human consumption, it's grown to feed livestock. Wheat is our only major agricultural export that's primarily used for food. We're expected to have a solid harvest this year and our exports are already up. Globally, though, we're a drop in the bucket as we only produce 9% of the total supply of wheat.

The likely outcome of this summer's weather will be that all types of meat and dairy products will become more expensive because corn prices have gone up. But even that might not happen because even with all the doom and gloom the USDA still predicts that this year's corn harvest will be the third largest on record. That's because farmers planted a near record 96.4 million acres of the stuff, up 5% from last year. (The record acreage planted was reportedly 97 million and change in 1937, coincidentally right after the worst of the Dust Bowl years when millions of farmers planted as many acres as the could in the hope of making enough money to survive after years of poor harvests.)

Exports down in the midwest (due to this drought) will significantly drive down the landed cost of all your other goods due to the availability of that equipment (that would have been used for those exports). This *should* in turn drive down the cost you pay at the register for your non food related goods in the short term, but the long term that will increase the already prevalent issue of Long haul drivers leaving the market and not being replaced, thus spawning capacity concerns in the next 2-3 years driving that cost right back up.

*edit this made a lot more sense a few bourbons ago when i started thinking about the long term effects of this.

Wired wrote:

Exports down in the midwest (due to this drought) will significantly drive down the landed cost of all your other goods due to the availability of that equipment (that would have been used for those exports). This *should* in turn drive down the cost you pay at the register for your non food related goods in the short term, but the long term that will increase the already prevalent issue of Long haul drivers leaving the market and not being replaced, thus spawning capacity concerns in the next 2-3 years driving that cost right back up.

*edit this made a lot more sense a few bourbons ago when i started thinking about the long term effects of this.

I'm not sure this really effects the long-haul driver issue, honestly. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

In Nebraska, none of the Ag people seem overly put out. More concern than usual over the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer if the drought keeps up, but not really a "crops failing oh f*ck" kind of concern.