By
David Streitfeld and Keith Bradsher
Published: June 10, 2008
We wrote a few months ago warning that this crisis would
only deepen over the summer as reserves continued to go down and the situation
in countries would become more desperate, with riots civil unrest and the
overthrow of nations looming large. We also wrote that the plantings for this
year would by no means end the problem of these chronic shortages – and that
next years planting and harvest (09) would be the first to really address these
shortages. In the fall this year as the
harvests come in food prices will rise higher than they are now. We exhort again
all our readers to make a pantry in your kitchen and buy extra basic dry goods,
rice. flour, noodles, dried potatoes, and number ten cans of the products you
use tomato sauce, kidney beans, baked beans, refried beans, corn, green peas and the like,
and consider also dried beans.
GRIFFIN, Indiana: In a year when global
harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages,
evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. (In all reality the harvest will be below average) Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.
American corn and soybean farmers are
suffering from too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued
by drought.
"The planting has gotten off to a poor start,"
said Bill Nelson, a Wachovia grains analyst. "The anxiety level
is increasing."
Randy Kron, whose family has
been farming in the southwestern corner of
Some of Kron's
fields are too soggy to plant. Some of the corn he managed to get in has
drowned, forcing him to replant. The seeds that
survived are barely two inches high.
At a moment when the country's corn should be flourishing,
one plant in 10 has not even emerged from the ground, the Agriculture
Department said Monday. Because corn planted late is more sensitive to heat
damage in high summer, every day's delay practically guarantees a lower yield at harvest.
"This is pushing my nerves to the limit," Kron said one recent morning, the sky as dark as the
unplanted earth.
Last winter, as the full scope of the
global food crisis became clear, commodity prices doubled or tripled, provoking
grumbling in
As the world clamors for more corn, wheat, soybeans and
rice, farmers are trying to meet the challenge. Millions of acres are coming back into production in
American farmers are planting 324 million acres this
year, up 4 million acres from 2007. Too
much of the best land is waterlogged, however. Indiana and Illinois have been
the worst hit, although Iowa,
Bob Biehl, whose
farm is near St. Louis, has managed to plant only 140 of the 650 acres he wanted to devote to corn. Some farmers in his area
"haven't even been able to take the tractor out of the shed," he said.
Harvests ebb and flow, of course. But with supplies of
most of the key commodities at their lowest levels in decades, there is little
room for error this year. American farmers are among the world's top producers,
supplying 60 percent of the corn that moves across international borders in a
typical year, as well as a third of the soybeans, a quarter of the wheat and a
tenth of the rice.
"If we have bad crops, it's going to be a wild
ride," said the Agriculture Department's chief economist, Joseph Glauber. "There's just no cushion."
As every farmer knows, trouble can come at any point
before the harvest is complete. Danny and Karen Smith get up in the middle of
the night at their wheat farm in
In a few weeks, the wheat they planted last fall will be
ripe. A bad storm or, worse, a tornado could destroy it. Last year, the Smiths
lost nearly all their wheat to a late freeze compounded by too much rain.
This year, the weather has been perfect: cool and moist.
"See how plump these berries are?" Smith said, standing in the middle
of one of his fields. "This will feed a lot of people."
The world wheat harvest is forecast to rise more than 8
percent this year, thanks to better weather and more acreage under cultivation.
But even this bright spot is tentative.
With the exception of southwestern
As a result, the harvest is likely to be below average: 5
million to 15 million tons of wheat available for export, compared with 17
million or 18 million tons in an average year.
China also faces trouble: the agriculture
ministry issued an urgent notice to wheat and rice farmers in southern China on
Sunday, instructing them to harvest as much of their crop as possible
immediately in the face of unseasonable torrential rains expected to rake the
region for the next 10 days.
In the American corn belt, the
issue has also been getting the rain to stop. After heavy rains and flooding
last weekend, the price of corn on the commodity markets rose Monday to a
record $6.57 a bushel.
"We can't snap our fingers and make high
yields," said Emerson Nafziger, a professor of
agronomic extension at the
A universal saying among farmers is that high prices
never last, because they encourage production that fills the demand and drives
down the prices. The current crisis is testing that theory. With costs soaring
for fertilizer and diesel, the expenses of farming are so high that the urge to
plant more is battling, in some places, with the temptation to
plant nothing.
Prajoub Suksapsri in
He and his neighbors have risked their savings to set up
a system to pump water into their fields. If rice prices stay high, Prajoub could make the biggest profit he has seen in years
from his two-acre farm. But if prices fall, he could face heavy losses.
"Sometimes I lie awake at night, worrying about
it," he said, watching his new Honda generator chug steadily, running the
pumps. The landlord for the fields that he rents is charging him more than
triple the usual amount just for the right to plant an extra harvest.
"He is sucking my blood," Prajoub said.
Helen Gabriel's farm in south-central
"We will have no crop this year," Gabriel said
as she waited in a three-hour line for the right to buy 4.4 pounds of
government-subsidized rice.
World stockpiles of rice are likely to shrink slightly
this year, excluding Chinese food security reserves that are not available for
world trade, after already dwindling markedly in six of the last eight years,
said Concepcion Calpe, a Food and Agriculture Organization rice specialist
in
That estimate does not take into account the turmoil in
"There's no doubt about it, we're not going to have
the rice to export," said Carl Frein of Farmers
Marketing Service in
For all the apprehension this year, the growing season is
still young, with plenty of time for the situation to improve — or for crops
to fail.
"I've seen mediocre starts get a bit better, and
mediocre starts get a whole lot worse," said Nelson, the
grains analyst.
Kron, the
Indiana farmer, gave up on corn last week after managing to plant — and in some
cases replant — only about half of his 1,200 acres.
Last year, his corn yielded 150 bushels an acre. This
year, he will be happy to get 130 bushels. He has warned his processor, Azteca Milling, which makes flour for tortillas and chips,
that he will be short.
Kron's
prospects are deteriorating. He was hoping to plant soybeans on some of his
unused corn ground, but hundreds of those acres adjoin the swollen
"I don't know if this is the worst year we've ever
had, but it's moving up the list pretty quick," the farmer said.
David Streitfeld reported from