Midwest flooding and food supplies

TRex2 wrote:I
https://emergencyhomeprep.forumotion.com/t1009-weather-affecting-food-prices-in-2019
(I started that one, because I didn't know about this one)

Over 100 scouts are currently travelling in the midwest region of the US. Along the route they stop every 15 to 20 miles and sample corn fields; the routes are pre-determined. On the first day scouts sampled in Ohio and South Dakota, while also taking in some of Indiana and Nebraska.

American farmers still working to get out their remaining soybeans after a weather-plagued harvest season are struggling to figure out what to do with a record crop now their traditionally dominant export market is largely closed.

Usually by this point in the year, 100-car trains filled with North Dakota soybeans would be moving to ports on the West Coast destined for China. But this year is different, after China all but stopped buying U.S. soybeans in response to President Donald Trump's trade tariffs.

A crop-eating pest first detected in China about five months ago is spreading rapidly and could hurt production of key crops critical to the populous nation’s food supply, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Damage from the so-called fall armyworm, which gorges on corn, soybeans, cotton, rice, and dozens of other crops, could force China to import more corn, rice or soy to makeup for the shortfall.
China is already dealing with a livestock crisis involving pork, one of its primary protein sources, putting Beijing is under greater pressure to respond to the armyworm.

DALIAN, China -- China's goal to increase soybean production to offset plunging imports from the U.S. is not going according to plan.

Beijing wants to increase soybean production 20% by 2020 over 2018 levels, as tariffs on American soybeans caused U.S. imports to fall 70%. But government subsidies aimed at encouraging growers to switch to soybeans have dried up, leaving farmers dismayed at what they see as broken promises.

"I don't trust the government because its support programs frequently change," said a farmer in his 30s in China's soybean capital of Heilongjiang Province, where 40% of the nation's soybeans are grown.

The grower had allotted 10% of his land to soybeans on the promise by the local government in February of a 150 yuan ($21.80) subsidy for every 667 sq. meters of land converted to soybeans. But the agriculture ministry suddenly nixed the subsidy in March, throwing the farmer's finances into disarray as he had already purchased seed and fertilizer for his new crop.

Soybeans are crucial to feeding the country. They are processed into bean curd, cooking oil and other food products, and the pomace is an important livestock feed.

The government was hopeful that a new seed -- developed under a $4.6 million grant -- would increase yields. According to its creator, the Research Institute of Soybean, the new variety doubles yields.

"The new seed will allow China to weather the trade war," said Cao Jujin, head of the institute, in reference to overcoming the dearth of American soybeans.

China is the world's biggest consumer of soybeans at 100 million tons per year, but relies on imports for 90% of this figure.

Brazil is the country's largest soybean supplier followed by the U.S. But Beijing slapped a 25% tariff on American beans in July 2018, causing imports from the U.S. to tumble 70% in the January-April period from a year earlier.

Although China increased purchases from Brazil, total soybean imports decreased 8% in 2018 from the previous year to 88 million tons.

To make up for the shortfall, Beijing announced plans to expand soybean farmland about 10% by 2020, which would bring soybean production to 19 million tons -- an increase of 20% from 2018.

...government miscues and simple economics have cooled farmers' response to any new plan. Soybean yield is only about 30% that of corn, meaning that only large-scale farms can earn profits.

"I have no intention of cultivating soybeans whatever the government says, because I can earn more from corn," said a 57-year-old Heilongjiang farmer.

According to sources, fiscal concerns at the national level forced the ministry to cancel some subsidies. The 2019 budget includes 45.2 billion yuan for the agricultural, forestry and fisheries sector, down 24% from 2018.

rick1 wrote:Beef prices are not expected to go up anytime soon.

I hope President XI is the first to get food poisoning from whatever they grow.

https://www.expressnews.com/business/local/article/Beef-prices-not-expected-to-jump-because-Midwest-14028289.php

The Economist - Print edition -| China
May 25th 2019| BEIJING
While the Chinese zodiac celebrates the year of the pig, for the Earth-bound variety it is a terrible time. African swine fever, harmless to humans but fatal to porkers, has spread across the country. Hong Kong’s first case was reported on May 17th. The epidemic has affected colossal numbers of pigs, pushing up pork prices steeply. It has walloped the tens of millions of Chinese who depend on pig-rearing for their livelihood. There is no effective vaccine. Experts say that it may take years for China to control the disease.

African swine fever is so named because the first known case was detected in Africa over a century ago. The virus spreads easily between pigs, which can also catch it from ticks, contact with contaminated surfaces or by eating infected food (cheap animal feed in China often contains pork). It causes haemorrhaging and often kills in less than a week. The death rate is at least 90%. Since 2016 outbreaks have occurred across Europe and Asia. But nowhere have they been more devastating than in China, which at least until recently was home to half of the world’s pigs.

One of my more shocking journalistic journeys was made in the mid-1980s, visiting a nondescript factory in the heart of Chongqing. I had asked to explore China’s farming industry, but the ministry of foreign affairs had some difficulties in getting me near an actual farm. Instead, this factory processed all of Sichuan’s pig intestines – 300 million a year.
I watched mountains of recently warm intestines stretched along clean metal tables, while one end of each intestine was plugged to a tap in the wall. After their inside walls had been flushed clean, the intestines were wrapped into tidy bundles of 12, put into huge ceramic jars, generously salted and then taken down into underground storage.
From September, when the weather began to cool, the jars would be brought out of cellarage and loaded onto barges down to Wuhan. From there, the jars took the train to Beijing and then the trans-Siberian railway across to Europe. The bosses told me this single factory supplied the great majority of Europe’s sausage casings.
So news that African Swine Fever has swept into China is a big deal, with massive ramifications not just for millions of Chinese pig farmers and the world’s largest consumer market for pork meat, but for industries across the world, whether it is German sausage makers, or Iowan soybean exporters.
The scale of China’s pork crisis is unclear. Most agree it arrived in Liaoning in the north in August last year, perhaps from Russia or Eastern Europe. Routine Chinese official paranoia about admitting a problem or being honest about the details means that it is uncertain, eight months later, just how far the swine fever has spread.

Beijing: Regulators have moved to release thousands of tons of China's emergency pork reserves as an outbreak of African swine fever fuels fears of a shortage in the pork-hungry nation.

China's hog herds made up half the global pig population until the outbreak, which has hit 32 provinces in the past 12 months. With a third of China's pigs culled, pork prices are soaring.

The problem is compounded by the looming major public holiday season of Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, where families expect to gather and eat meat. Eating pork is so central to Chinese culture that the 3000 year old Chinese character for "home" was drawn as a pig under a roof.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Times are hard in recession-hit Argentina and the peso currency’s latest crash has jolted food prices higher.

But in a country where eating beef is considered more a right than a luxury, people are stretching their budgets to keep buying steak while butcher shops see profit margins shrink.

Social life revolves around weekend barbecues for Argentines, rich and poor. The cherished image of the gaucho cowboy, wandering the pampas on horseback and dining on top quality steak around the fire, is as much a part of the nation’s identity as the tango, Evita Peron, and financial crises.

The latest economic setback occurred earlier this month when a landslide victory for the populist opposition in an Aug. 11 primary vote sparked a run on the peso and hobbled business-friendly President Mauricio Macri’s campaign to win a second term in October’s presidential election.

Reuters COMMODITIES SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
China clears 25 Brazil meat plants for export, lifting shares
Jamie McGeever, Jake Spring, Ana Mano

BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - China granted export licenses to 25 Brazilian meatpacking plants, Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry said on Monday, allowing the country’s fast-growing protein industry to feed more people in the Asian nation where disease has hurt local supply.
Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry said the plants - including 17 for beef exports, six for chicken, and one each for pork and donkey meat - “can already export immediately.”

China is Brazil’s largest export market for beef, chicken and pork, with demand surging since last year as an African swine fever outbreak has decimated China’s pig herds.

Brazilian pork exports to China soared 48% in the first eight months of the year, according to Brazil government statistics, while beef exports to China are up 17% and chicken exports rose soared 37%.

Even as the United States labeled China a “currency manipulator” on the back of a weakening renminbi, recent trade talks were reported to be “constructive.” This offers hope of a truce in the trade war but tit-for-tat moves by either party can’t be ruled out.

THE US Federal Reserve’s dovish stance is a respite to most emerging markets including China, but the People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) move to bring the renminbi (RMB) below 7.0 per US dollar—a key psychological threshold—may have profound global implications. It is arguably sensible for China to rely on the renminbi exchange rate as a monetary lever at a time when the movement of short-term interest rates could become constrained by the zero lower bound, due to the continued process of interest rate liberalization in the country. Of course, should the US-China trade war drag on and escalate with tit-for-tat moves from both sides, it would also be logical for China to unveil measures that could offset higher tariffs. In the long run, a truce in the trade war is needed so that wounded investment sentiment can gradually heal.

Last week, the Chinese yuan depreciated further and broke through the very closely watched level of seven yuan per dollar. This depreciation sent global equity markets into a tailspin, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average declining almost 3%.

Many market economists view the Chinese currency breach of the long-held seven-yuan level as a sign that trade negotiations with the U.S. are going poorly, resulting in the global markets selling off.

However, it may be a sign of a much more troubling problem. China has some issues eerily similar to what other Asian countries had just prior to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. That event two decades ago has been analyzed in great detail. It was triggered by a debt default of two companies: Somprasong Land (a major Thai property developer) and Finance One (one of Thailand’s largest finance companies). Currency traders began to short the Thai currency, and eventually it broke its peg to the U.S. dollar, resulting in a 40% collapse in value. This steep drop made paying back dollar-denominated loans impossible. Currency weakness spread to South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. All their currencies declined dramatically --between 34% and 83% against the dollar. Equity markets around the world, including the U.S., experienced significant declines.

While the trigger was a debt default as financial conditions shifted, the underlying factors had long been in place – these were export-driven economies that had close government co-operation with preferred manufacturers, subsidies, favorable financial deals, massive debt-financed growth and a currency pegged to the U.S dollar. Sound familiar?

FAO’s new forecast for global cereal production in 2019 stands at 2 708 million tonnes, 23 million tonnes higher than the forecast made in July and now 55.4 million tonnes (2.1 percent) above the 2018 outturn. Almost the entire monthly increase is on account of an upward revision made to the forecast for world maize production, now pegged at 1 124 million tonnes, 2.0 percent higher than in July and up 0.7 percent from 2018. These more buoyant expectations mostly stem from improved yield prospects in the United States, despite excessive rainfall through much of the planting season. Additionally, with the maize harvest nearing completion in Brazil, the country’s 2019 production forecast was lifted recently, further augmenting global prospects.

These positive revisions outweighed an anticipated reduction in global wheat production in 2019, which FAO now pegs at 767 million tonnes, 4 million tonnes lower than in July. Reduced crop productivity in the Russian Federation and the European Union was only partially offset by an increase in production estimates for China and the United States resulting from positive yield revisions. Even with this month’s downward revision, this year’s global wheat output is still forecast to exceed 2018’s outturn by 36 million tonnes (5.0 percent).

The latest forecast for global rice production (milled equivalent) in 2019 is set at 517 million tonnes, a slight upward revision from the July report and now on par with last year’s record level. China accounts for the bulk of this increase, as farmers planted more paddy fields than previously anticipated, driven by expectations of better profitability. Similarly, in the United States, mirroring fewer than previously anticipated cuts in plantings, stemming from adverse weather and poor price prospects, production has been revised upwards. These increases are expected to more than offset a slight contraction in Bangladesh, on account of lower area sown, mostly owing to low market prices.

The record world cereal utilization forecast for 2019/20 has been further increased to 2 715 million tonnes, up 7 million tonnes from July and 37.0 million tonnes (1.4 percent) higher than in 2018/19. The forecast for total wheat utilization has been raised slightly (by 1.6 million tonnes) since the previous report to 760 million tonnes, pointing to a new peak and a 1.8 percent increase over 2018/19. While, in absolute terms, higher food consumption is the main driver behind this year-on-year growth in world wheat utilization, the overall feed use of wheat is expected to increase by 3.7 percent. This would represent a faster annual growth than in recent years, with a robust increase in feed use of wheat especially in the EU and the United States. Total utilization of coarse grains in 2019/20 is pegged at 1 437 million tonnes, also marking a new record, up some 5 million tonnes from the July forecast and 1.2 percent (17 million tonnes) larger than in 2018/19. Higher utilization of maize and barley account for most of the upward revision since July as well as the bulk of the expected increase from the previous season, more than offsetting a small decrease in the use of sorghum. World rice utilization in 2019/20 is anticipated to reach an all-time high of 519 million tonnes, up 1.3 percent year-on-year and resulting in a 0.5 kilo annual expansion in the per capita intake.

Chinese importers bought about 10 boatloads of U.S. soybeans on Monday following deputy-level trade talks in Washington last week that were overshadowed by the abrupt cancellation of a U.S. farm state visit by Chinese agriculture officials.

The deals for about 600,000 tonnes, slated for shipment from Pacific Northwest export terminals from October to December, were similar in size to a wave of buying earlier this month, two traders with direct knowledge of the deals said.

Benchmark U.S. soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade jumped about 1.5% on news of the renewed buying, the market's steepest rise since Chinese buyers bought a large volume of U.S. soybeans on Sept. 12.

The soybean purchases, which at more than 600,000 tonnes were the largest by Chinese private importers in more than a year, are slated for shipment from U.S. Pacific Northwest export terminals from October to December, two traders with knowledge of the deals said.

The purchases were another indication that trade tensions between Washington and Beijing could be easing, after hitting a low last month when China suspended all U.S. farm product purchases in response to threats by President Donald Trump to impose more tariffs on Chinese goods.

dmwalsh568 wrote:I use a place called IFSbulk.com for bulk bean purchases and they list Dark Red Kidney Beans at just under $13 for a 10 pound box, but they aren't available at the moment...hmmm, but the 25 pound boxes are available at just under $30 plus shipping.

They do list Red Beans for $1.42 per point in 10 pound boxes, but the description says they are known as Mexican Red Beans even though they are grown in USA or Canada.

So shopping around may help, but none of these places are shy on their shipping costs, so check the total with shipping before making any final decision on which vendor to use. IFSbulk is in NJ and I'm in MA so they are fairly close, but shipping adds around 25-30% to the total price. And I've been happy with them so have gotten about 250 pounds of various beans over the past couple of years - pinto, red, black, garbanzo and of course a variety of lentils too.

Hope this is helpful.

Dave58 wrote:

 I went on line today because I would like to by red kidney beans in bulk or at least 20lb at a time. What  I found was I can order them from a bulk food store in Ohio ,but I think they were high depending where you looked they were as much as $57.00 for 20lb plus shipping..

ReadyMom wrote:

Dave58 wrote:

 I went on line today because I would like to by red kidney beans in bulk or at least 20lb at a time. What  I found was I can order them from a bulk food store in Ohio ,but I think they were high depending where you looked they were as much as $57.00 for 20lb plus shipping..

 There is a ethnic grocery store near me where I have bought most of my dry beans. They also have Ghee, bulk spices, rice, box & powder milks. I haven't been in at all, this summer (busy wedding year & I have a LOT of beans stored away, right now).  I wonder what their prices are now, too. Hadn't thought about that!

Dave58 wrote:The sausage turned out great we made a pound at a time. The first time was way to much Sage. The next time it came out really good.. So we will process the rest of it today. It will end up costing us about $1.50 per pound ..

My wife had one very important question "Why didn't I buy an electric meat grinder ? " after running it threw by hand I didn't have a good answer ..

USDA crop progress: Corn harvest limps along
This year’s harvest still lingering 20% behind the prior five-year average
Ben Potter | Oct 28, 2019

The 2019 U.S. corn harvest continues to drag along, with only another 11% completed this past week, according to the latest USDA crop progress report, out Monday afternoon.

Only 41% of the crop has been harvested

I admit, this is a bit odd for a market analyst who is constantly being asked where prices are headed, but between you and me, I don’t like making predictions.

Please understand, I put a lot of effort into making predictions and estimates because I know many are taking my words seriously and I want to do right by our customers.

It’s not the embarrassment of possibly being wrong that I don’t like as much as the concern that some will only focus on the prediction itself and not try to understand the factors that go into it. The real value of good analysis comes from understanding the key factors so that one knows how to adjust to the surprises that inevitably come along.

Corn saw the steepest cuts, but soybeans and wheat also finished lower Monday

The coronavirus continues to fuel pandemic worries not seen since the SARS outbreak more than a decade ago, pushing down a broad range of commodities again Monday amid a round of massive fund selling. Grain prices were not immune, with corn spilling almost 2% lower in today’s session, while soybean and CBOT wheat saw more modest cuts. Kansas City HRW futures bucked the overall trend thanks to a rally just before the close, finishing the session slightly higher.