Sowing the Seeds of Self-Reliance for Forty Years
What You Don’t See Really Can Hurt
19 Oct 97
by Geri Guidetti
All contents copyright © 1997, Geri Guidetti. All rights reserved.
________________________________________
I ate a live yellow jacket yesterday and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Over the years I’ve heard my share of stories of men taking swigs of soda at ball games and children biting into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at family picnics only to find themselves with more in their mouths than food or fizz. I’ve felt compassion for the tellers of these stories, but compassion tends to be an experiential phenomenon, I think. It’s something like feeling empathy for the hungry when you, yourself, have a full stomach—you feel it, but you don’t FEEL it. It’s the same with yellow jackets. Once you’ve had your own personal, oral encounter with one of these sandwich-cheek-gum-lip-tongue-and-everything else-eaters, you can FEEL it.
Perhaps more painful than multiple bites inside your mouth is the feeling that you’ve been assaulted by something you didn’t even know was there. It is that element of surprise—of getting caught completely off guard—that is so unsettling. There you are, doing what you’ve done for years—in this case, going to the garden just before dinner to pick a bowlful of fresh greens, carrots, onions, and herbs for a big salad—and there it was. As anyone who lives this kind of organic garden-based lifestyle will tell you, one of the joys of harvesting your own food is popping some perfectly luscious "something" you serendipitously find on such a foray into your mouth. That large, patent-leather-shiny, sweet and juicy blackberry that just happened to be dangling in front of my face as I pulled a carrot clearly beckoned to me. The yellow devil had apparently heeded the same calling and was eating that same succulent berry from the inside out. He didn’t care to share.
It is such a hidden, nasty surprise that I thought of this morning when I began to summarize the data I’ve been gathering on this year’s food harvests now well underway around the world. Some of the harvest headlines appearing in the national media over the past few weeks might lead you to believe that we are awash in record harvests of grain this year.
"Corn Stocks Up Sharply—May Set New Record" announces one.
"Record World Wheat Crop Expected" assures another.
If you didn’t read past those attention getting, don’t-worry-be-happy headlines, chances are you missed the rest of the story in the paragraphs below them. Yet, from the copies of some of the articles sent to me by folks around the country, the paragraphs beneath the headlines frequently don’t TELL the rest of the story. In fact, there’s trouble brewing on the food front, and it’s best we know about it ahead of the game than to get stung, unawares, down the road.
Here is the latest on where we are on the food front so far this year, and where we might be headed:
"Lower Carryin and Higher Use Tighten Feed Grain Situation"
So begins the USDA’s outlook for grains used to produce all of the meat, dairy and poultry products we need in this country and want for export. Two weeks ago, news headlines reported predictions for a record corn harvest this season, but a close look at the numbers tells the real story. As of October 1, the 1997 corn crop is expected to be 9,312 million bushels. That’s 44 million bushels over last month’s estimates and 18 million bushels above last year’s harvest. But here’s the rest of the story: total USE of corn for the 1997/98 year is projected to be 9,425 million bushels, that’s up 70 million bushels from last month’s estimates. Do you want to look at those numbers again? Corn production, 9,312 million. Corn use, 9,425 million. Bottom line? Right now, it appears we’re going to use more corn this year than we are harvesting. Do I need to tell you that this is not a good trend?
The USDA goes on to say:
"With a lower carryin and higher use more than offsetting the increase in forecast production, carryout stocks are projected at 781 million bushels, down 83 million from last month."
Over recent decades, when there was a less-than-spectacular harvest in any one season, the fall-back was the tremendous stockpiles of grain that were stored by government programs. We produced so much grain in excess of what we used, that it was easy, though expensive, to store much of that excess for the proverbial "rainy day." No more. (See my July 9 Update, " Whatever Happened to Wheat Mountain?")
Last year we almost ran completely out of corn in late August, just before the harvest. Cattle ranchers and dairy operators were forced to kill off hundreds of thousands of animals because they could not afford to feed them. Then we had a decent corn harvest last fall--enough to meet this year’s needs and a bit to store to see us through to THIS harvest. But now what has happened? The USDA reports that our USE of corn this year has used up more of that carryover supply, and current and projected use this year will MORE than offset projections of production, so the left-overs—the ending stocks that might be a cushion to carry us over until NEXT year’s crop comes in—are now much lower than expected. In other words, we’re going to have even less of a cushion available this coming year. ( I will calculate and report to you approximately how many days of cushion we have left when the final harvest figures are in. )
Taking a look at the bigger food picture, I recently reported that world agricultural experts were predicting that 1998 would be the year that global demand for grain was likely to begin to outstrip production. I believe we’re beginning to see the first signs of this dreaded watershed this year—1997. And, given the potential negative impact of the current El Niño on global agriculture this year and next (See my June 24 Grain Supply Update), and the still unmentioned and unforeseen effects of this bad boy’s cold sister, La Niña, the year after, carryover stocks are more important than ever. Yet grain use will likely go up again next year. The big food squeeze is beginning.
Interestingly the Chinese government, unlike the U.S. and 28 other OECD countries, continues to stockpile large quantities of corn and wheat. In fact, in 1995 and 1996 China bought enormous corn reserves on the world market, so when drought hit northern China this year, they continued to be able to EXPORT old-crop corn into the market. This year China’s corn production is forecast down 22.5 million tons over last year, yet they expect to continue to export from their stockpiles, reducing their carryover to a still substantial 20 million tons. With this sell-off, the global stocks-to-use ratio for coarse grains (mostly corn) will be at a record low—a mere 11.1 percent. This is a very weak global safety net, the same global net we must depend on to "catch" us in the event of a national grain shortfall.
Soybeans—the source of human food and animal feed, of printing ink, vegetable oil and many other products around the world—are now at their lowest levels since the 1976 crop! Last year’s stored crop is down 28% from 1996 levels. Use of soybeans last year during the month of September was 2.33 billion bushels. This September, we used 2.43 billion bushels. Use between June-August was up 25% from a year before. Bottom line: the lowest soybean stocks in 21 years coupled with dramatically increased consumption. These figures, too, are unsettling.
As this goes to press, the U.S. wheat crop is largely harvested for this season and is estimated at 2.53 billion bushels, up 11% from last year. This is not a record. It would be the fifth largest on record. Total USE of wheat is now revised upward by 25 million bushels. Projected ending stocks are 665 million bushels; that’s down 6 million bushels from August. The decline in expected ending stocks of wheat, coupled with the the more dismal corn and soybean stocks, has led to higher wheat prices on U.S. grain markets.
World wheat production is now projected to be a record 601 million tons this year. The largest increases in production were in Russia and India. Russia will export wheat. India is expected to stockpile their excess. The U.S. wheat export market may decline this year because of better production abroad. Though this does not bode especially well for balance of trade figures, it does bode well for those who see wisdom in buying wheat for personal storage. Look ahead to next year’s wheat crop. Planting of winter wheat is occurring right now where weather is not an impedence, but an El Niño precipitated drought next year in the northern plains states—the nation’s wheat bowl—could change the outlook for next season’s crop in a hurry. It would also prevent the potential for a spring wheat crop harvest. Remember, the U.S. doesn’t stockpile anywhere near a year’s worth of wheat anymore. It has ranged anywhere from about 28 to 55 days in recent years. That’s wheat for seed and for food. This is not enough to see us through a bad harvest. We would be at the mercy of global market supplies.
If you have been reading these Updates regularly, you already know that there are many factors threatening our personal and global food supply that appear to be converging at this time in our history. There is yet one more that you may want to monitor. A still largely hidden Union Pacific Corp railroad story—an emerging debacle apparently caused by the merger of this rail giant with Southern Pacific Rail Corp—has resulted in rail car and shipment nightmares that are crippling deliveries of commodities to critical industries across the country. Industries like auto manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, lumber, chemicals—and grain.
Thousands of rail cars, maybe even tens of thousands according to some reports, are tied up or "missing" in a morass of computer-generated nightmares that no one expected according to company spokespersons. Keep one eye on this developing story. As bad as this one is getting, it may be most important for providing us with a glimpse of the potential computer-generated food distribution and delivery crises that may occur if these same, economically-critical transportation computers fail to meet Year 2000 compliance.
A nation of folks completely dependent for their food on a global safety net that’s becoming dangerously thin, and on a complex network of troubled distribution technologies that are entirely dependent on computers for their functioning, is not food secure. In fact, it’s no more secure that someone eating blackberries fresh from the bramble without looking beneath the surface for possible hidden dangers. It’s simply not smart to presume everything’s okay just because it has been in the past. The past does not predict the future. .....Geri Guidetti, The Ark Institute
________________________________________
Food and Grain Supply Updates may be reprinted without permission IF no revisions are made and copyright and signature files remain intact.
All contents copyright © 1997, Geri Guidetti. All rights reserved.
Revised: 20 Oct 97
Welcome to The Ark Institute ®
