Global Food Prices

Wheat Prices, Bread Prices - What's the connection?

The price of a bushel of wheat is approaching $9.00. Analysts tell us that the sharp rise in wheat futures in recent weeks is unusual and is credited to serious crop losses in key growing areas as well as consumption exceeding production. As a result, world supplies of wheat are the lowest they've been in over 30 years.

The question is – will this, or better yet, should this result in higher prices for foods made from wheat? It's important to note that wheat only makes up a small percentage of the cost of a loaf of bread and even less in wheat- based cereal. Increases in the price of these products are not because of the price of wheat. Advertising and marketing costs incurred by these brands are much larger especially in products such as snack crackers, cereals and commercial breads, than the actual wheat ingredients themselves. So, it's safe to say that the price of bread and crackers will not double despite the fact that wheat futures have.

Flour might be a different story. Being closer to the raw commodity, flour prices will be affected first while price increases for other products such as wheat-based snack foods will most likely not occur for a few months. Keep in mind that just because wheat is forecast to rise to almost $9.00/bushel, it is a long time until harvest and prices could go down significantly between now and then.

Let us know if you have seen any differences in the price of foods made from wheat in your local area.

Aaron Harries, Director of Marketing
Kansas Wheat

Food prices? World hunger?
Water shortages? Cropland failure?
Global warming? Environmental destruction?
Migrations? Refugees?
The 8000-pound gorilla that not one of the comments covered:
OVER POPULATION!

It is clear that the biggest real problem is US, the people of this Earth.
We have already exceeded at least the comfortable carrying capacity of the Earth in terms of human population, and are almost at the point of exceeding the ultimate carrying capacity (maybe within the next 20 to 50 years...nothing in "Earth time").
At that time there will be unimaginable and unmanageable starvation and destruction of the global population, of all populations...Human, other animals, plants, everything!

Although it may be the hardest question of all to discuss, at the core of any of these discussions must be the question of global population and its management.
That is all it is about.

POPULATION, POPULATION, POPULATION!

The worst think that can happen in another recession is soaring food prices and scarcity.

God help us all.

But wait till the heat shows up if one thinks it's bad now.

The temporary (hopefully) problems that are causing high food prices are dought in several high-yield areas, especially Australia. The long term problems include increased consumption of meat and milk in developing countries, which requires much more feed and ethanol, which now consumes 25% of US corn consumption (which is the single largest commodity crop in the US). Also contributing is higher oil prices (which raises transportation costs) and higher natural gas prices (which raises the cost of fertilizer).

John Z- what is wrong with you, aren't you Pro-Life?
Just kidding. Yes, overpopulation is at the heart of environmental problems and world hunger. Do you remember the first thing that George W. Bush did in his first day in office? He announced that U.S. funds would no longer be spent on international family planning and contraception. Seems some of his Evangelical friends had a problem with small families.

Chris, if I am not mistaken the current administration liberally funds foreign aid for contraception but will not fund those programs that include abortion as a component of family planning.

WASHINGTON, June 21 (AP) — The House voted narrowly on Thursday to reverse a ban on contraception aid to groups overseas that offer abortions, a pillar of President Bush's foreign aid policy.

Mr. Bush is likely to veto the proposal, and the veto is likely to be upheld by conservative lawmakers.

Even though the Democrats expect a veto, they brought the measure up for a vote to reopen debate on a policy initiated by President Reagan in 1984 that bars any aid to organizations abroad that perform or promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Democrats say an unintended consequence of the policy is a shortage of contraceptives.

Not the emphasis on the word "unintended" in the phrase "unintended consequence of the policy"

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977241944&nav=Namespace

Chris, John Z....check out the article at the address above.

Most fertilizers are made from petroleum products, and of course most farmland is tilled using tractors and other oil-powered machinery.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Even Shell oil company supports Peak Oil:

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/beyond-the-barrel/2008/1/25/shell-admits-cheap-oil-is-running-out.html

John Z., you are absolutely right. The 21st century will be the one in which Sir Thomas Malthus is proven right. Population will outstrip available resources and there will be a sociological catastrophe, i.e. a literal die-off. Interesting link, Ivan N., but totally irrelevant. It's the same old "Stand on Zanzibar" canard. It's not about living space and how many people you can squeeze into a square mile. It's about the resources necessary to support that population. They will not be there. Billy R., you win the prize. The tipping point will be the peaking of global oil supplies, which has either already happened or will happen in this decade. There is very little legitimate debate about this issue in petroleum business. And a global population of six billion is simply not sustainable without a high-energy, oil-based economy. Fertilizers, processing, transportation, etc. Peak oil is real, it is imminent and we have no suitable alternatives available of a scale that will mitigate the coming oil crash. By the way, for the flat-earthers and poo-pooers who will scoff at the concept of peak oil, here is a report that was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy and delivered in February of 2005. It was buried by the Bushies since they have made a religion out of denying information that they find inconvenient.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

I dread the years ahead, especially as the parent of a fine young man who will live through more of it than I will. We humans are at one and the same time the most intelligent species on this planet and the stupidest. We are going to breed ourselves into a catastrophe, and there is nothing that anybody can do about it. Sad...

Note to Tom Ashbrook and colleagues: I would really like to see On Point and other NPR vehicles seriously address the issue of peak oil, and not simply as a sidebar to discussions about prices at the pump and oil speculators. This issue will change our civilization in draconian and potentially devastating ways, forever. It needs to be faced head on and discussed with the depth it deserves. Civilization is whistling past the graveyard...

Peak Oil would make a good issue to explore. I do not believe in the peak oil theory as it is proposed currently.
Obviously oil is finite.
But whether we are at peak oil or not is a question that requires information that is not public, and not all in yet, namely an accurate estimate of how much oil there is.
Since we have been in Iraq, major oil finds that substantially affect the world's reserves have been found in the Iraq, Venezuela, and I believe Alaska, and possible others.
There is no reason to think that there is not exploitable oil in many other places enough to shift the curve of the peak oil off to at least 100-200 years just based on what we know now. Considering the CO2 crisis, and the expected lowering of fossil fuel consumption over that time we may never get to peak oil, or when we do the affects may be moot because we may not even use oil the way we do today.

Mark S. I agree with you on population, that is the single biggest problem facing us, with the least access to discussion or consideration of a solution, and no way that I can see that it will be even able to be addressed, even though vitutally everyone I have ever known in my life recognizes this problem and agrees with this same some religious nutcases who think God is coming.

I do have to disagree with your conception of someone who disagrees with peak oil as a flat earther - see my last post. Nuclear energy is the only real alternative, and a nuclear economy and the conversion of most or all powered vehicles to electric power is a very good answer to current problems of environment and global warming. Again, the problem is people's attitudes and how to change them.

The Catholic Church has a lot of influence in many of these third world countries. They are anti birth control. They preach "don't have sex, but if you do- breed until you drop"

Thanks, Bruce. Good comments. However, have you read the Hirsch Report? Speaking as one who has researched this concept since learning about "Hubbert's Peak" a couple of years ago, I can assure you that the government-funded Hirsch Report is one of the least strident of all the published warnings, and it is frightening enough. Yes, there will be additional reserves of exploitable oil discovered, but probably none of the supergiant size of the Saudi Ghawar Field and others in the ME that are approaching (or past) maturity. If they were out there to be discovered they would have been by now. And counting on the Saudis, or any government in that region, for truthful estimates is a fool's errand. I submit that the Saudis have not increased their daily output at record oil prices not because they are trying to keep prices in the 3-digit range but because they simply can't, not without injecting half of the Persian Gulf seawater into the deep strata to drive out more oil. At the present time, the ME reserves are basically keeping the world economy afloat. And when they peak...?

Your assertion that there will be oil around in 100 to 200 years is absolutely correct. We can never extract every last drop of refinable oil from the earth's crust any more than you can extract every drop of water from a sponge just by squeezing it. The question is, can you keep enough flowing freely to keep an exploding global economy from, well, exploding?

That nuclear is the long-term solution is a given. Unfortunately, due to shortsighted political wrangling and resistance, it will take peaking of global oil supplies to drive the crash programs of nuclear construction we will need, which will still leave us in an unpleasant but hopefully temporary dilemma.

I honestly wish that all the very smart people who are joining the chorus of voices warning us about global peak were wrong, but I fear they are not. And don't forget the coming peak of natural gas, which is projected to happen sometime after petroleum peaks. Civilization is headed toward a concrete wall at 90 miles an hour. I wish it were not so, but I have been reluctantly convinced the a growing consensus among geologists and petroleum engineers that it is.