Thursday, May 05, 2011

Declining crop yields

http://greedgreengrains.blogspot.com/2011/05/declining-crop-yields.html

TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2011

There are many reasons for high commodity prices. But recent data from FAO shows a pretty rapid slowdown in productivity growth. The price spike in 2008 occurred in a particularly bad year in which yields declined on a worldwide basis for three of the four largest food commodities. In 2009 all four of the majors saw yield declines, something that hasn't happened since 1974. 2010 couldn't have been much better and was probably worse, given how bad things were in the U.S, the world's largest producer and exporter (worldwide data for 2010 isn't available yet).


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There is a good comment on this post from rjs about this.
See his blogs at http://greedgreengrains.blogspot.com/
and http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/usa-fed-discount-idUSN2827428520110428

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Posted by Patricia at 9:42 PM
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3 comments:

rjs said...

don't know if you noticed my comments on greedgreen&grains & economistsview or not, patricia, but i've been watching what could be a major problem developing with this years corn crop...rainfall for april set records from southern illinois to ohio (ie, cleveland, columbus & cincinnati set records), leaving most of the fields in the eastern cornbelt saturated and puddled.....this is the first year in 39 years when i have been unable to till all april because of saturated ground; nor have i seen a tractor out anywhere in my ohio county...so i did some looking at conditions in other states, and found that as of the USDA report on the 24th, only 2% of indiana corn was in, compared to 50% same date last year; only 10% of illinois is planted, compared to 67% last year; only 3% of iowa corn is in, compared to a normal 28%, and only 1% of ohio's corn has been planted, and similar situations exist in nebrask & south dakota; based on my observations of rain over the past week, i doubt much has been planted since......as any corn grower will tell you, total yields decrease the later your corn is planted, so this does not bode well for supplies, with corn stocks 15% already below last years, and 40% of our corn going to ethanol...this could change with a couple weeks of warm dry weather, but it bears watching, especially in light of the agricultural disasters worldwide last summer...

i had about a dozen links to relevant stories on my globalglassonion blog last week, and will probably carry a similar number on it this week as well...

7:38 AM
Patricia said...

Thanks. This is useful to know.

9:40 PM
rjs said...

i have a over a dozen links from both this week & last week on my blog, but this table about sums up what i've discovered:

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/5/5/153859-130460381287373-Michael-Ferrari_origin.png

(corn planted after the first week in may is at risk)

9:57 AM

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