Global rice shortage is set to be the biggest in 20 years | Hacker News Reader

Global rice shortage is set to be the biggest in 20 years

cnbc.com

173 pointsPaul-Craft254 comments

This article is interesting as it's from the perspective of a major exporter, India, (rather than a commodities trader):

https://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/india-ric...

> "“We can’t resume broken rice exports just because somebody in China or any other country wants it as a raw material to make ethanol or cattle feed. We’ll rather prefer our domestic industry consuming it... We don’t want to take a chance. We’ve limited wheat stocks but ample rice stocks, which we can use if the weather throws any big surprises."

Incidentally, much of the research into how rice production responds to rising CO2 and rising global temperatures was based on greenhouse studies in which CO2 and temperate was artificially manipulated, for example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751296/

However, it's turning out that the increasingly random and extreme incidences of droughts and floods is what's impacting agricultural production the most. India's approach seems the most rational: build bigger domestic buffers against future uncertainties.

Also, the future of biofuels and meat production looks quite poor, as crop production is going to be needed to feed humans directly.

A lot of livestock feed is produced in environments where rice or wheat is out of question.

Wheat can reliably grow pretty much anywhere except nonirrigated clearcut former jungle, it's just not economically competitive (on the global market) when it has to be harvested from any kind of sloped terrain.

It used to be the case, when cattle was grazing hills too steep for culture (without terraces at least). But nowadays, most cattle is fed from cultivated grains instead of grazing.

Do you have a source on that?

My understanding is that most cattle are finished on grain but most of that feed is distillers grains [1], which is an industrial waste from ethanol and biofuel production. The majority of cattle spend most of their lives brackgrounding [2] in pasture. They're not put on the feedlots until the last six or so months of their life to fatten them up for butchering.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backgrounding

It's not even true that most cattle are finished on grain. Feed lots utilize hay and silage as often as grain.

And sometimes candy corn [1].

[1] https://www.nifa.usda.gov/feeding-candy-cattle-helps-produce...

I used to own a horse and would regularly feed her sugar cubes. I guess that works too!

Which I wholeheartedly support.

I worked as seasonal help in a local chocolate and candy factory. Any chocolate not fit for sale for whatever reason went to sheep (and possibly pigs?) It is a good way to lessen food waste.

From the perspective of this discussion, hay and silage are indistinguishable from grain: if you can grow and harvest them, you could have make human food directly off that land.

A lot of the world production is grazing on land. Even in the US perhaps a huge percentage of the cattle growth is by grazing:

  Beef cattle production is done within a system that includes grazing on large amounts of land per cow; being fed high-calorie diets for a few months in large populations immediately prior to slaughter; long gestation and growth periods so that animals are sold for food 2-3 years from the time they were conceived; and, in most situations, more than two changes of ownership from birth to being sold for food.

I would like to see some figures, but my presumption is that your understanding is correct.

https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-production-ranking-co...

A lot of people just get the data from the largest companies in developed countries, and pretend it applies everywhere. You can't talk about agriculture around here without one of them popping up.

Maybe in the US, where there's plenty of available space, but that's definitely not the case everywhere in Europe for instance. Also in the US, I wonder which part of that space in unsuitable for growing grain…

By the way, even your Wikipedia link about backgounding mention that the animals are being given grain even in that period…

The system of domestic buffers existed before for public distribution system inherited from British in both India and Pakistan who were told to get rid of it by IMF. Pakistan did so with alacrity in 80s but still has utility stores at province level IIRC.

I mean this is the whole point of the US ethanol industry and farm subsidies in general(that many people complain about online), better to have people growing too much corn than not having enough. If the US did have some drought or disaster that damaged a huge amount of crops, we just stop making ethanol and use the stockpiles and reduced crop to feed ourselves. In the meantime we use the excess for ethanol production, even if it's technically a net loss

Aren't ethanol, animal feed, and human food corn all separate, non-interchangeable species? Usually ethanol stuff and animal feed stock are completely inedible, at least in my EU country.

might be separate, non-interchangeable species (I don't know) but they require the same farmers, equipment, logistics, etc, to be in place and as everyone learned the last few years those things don't just scale up and down like latest cloud tech here.

The land is interchangeable, and 'human food corn' encompasses a lot more than just corn eaten directly by humans. Almost every processed food in the US uses some corn derived product; and animal feed is still part of the supply chain for human food.

I'm not sure how that works with corn, but quite a few things that aren't fit for human consumption in times of plenty are quite edible in a famine, or can be made so.

I don't think it's that but that most human digestive systems will catastrophically fail trying to digest ethanol-corn or animal feed-corn.

You can eat field corn just fine. You shouldn't eat it raw at maturity because of the high starch content, but the solution to that is simply to harvest a bit earlier before all the starch is formed. It's not very sweet, but it's perfectly edible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

There are two primary types of corn: field corn and sweet corn. Only sweet corn can be eaten raw or lightly cooked, but field corn can be turned into edible products (e.g. cereal) with some standard processing.

That's mostly inedible for direct consumption, like corn on the cob. Processing into something like cornmeal though is open to much more species, including the original maize that all corn was essentially bred from.

Yes, but the farm equipment that plants and harvests it is the same. Planting different seeds is easy, buying new equipment is not.

Also, as the transportation sector transitions to electric vehicles the demand for corn ethanol should drop off so if we need to produce more edible corn there should be excess capacity available.

>> this is the whole point of the US ethanol industry and farm subsidies in general

Interesting. I never saw it as a food security program.

I saw it as a way to advantage corn at the expense of oil on the global commodities market because we had lots of corn but we were short oil (at the time). So the solution was to, in effect, turn our corn into oil.

You can see its effect in the price of corn in 2006, which jumped about 80% and never went back down.[1]

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/2532/corn-prices-historical-char...

The whole point of the US ethanol industry and farm subsidies in general is, like any form of government welfare, to give money to a special interest group (farmers) in exchange for their political support. It's not some kind of benevolent 4-dimensional chess to make the food supply more reliable. The type of corn grown for ethanol is not suitable for human consumption.

What changes would you recommend making so that the food supply could be secured without subsidies?

It's not 4-dimensional chess, it is simple strategy and two things can be true at the same time. The same applies to the defense industry's bloat -- keeping defense contractors capable to meet war time demand and eating up that cost now so it won't take 10 years to rebuild later on. At the same time, politicians make job programs out of these things to get reelected but these are "swing vote" politicians, every other politician would have to vote based on policy so that a nyc congressperson doesn't have to answer to voting for farm subsidies and military waste without some justification (even if his vote is in exchange for support for somee other vote).

Is it still farmers? seems like more and more farmland is being bought up by corporations that manage many farms, at least in NZ.

the sub 1% of the population that are farmers in states that aren't battle ground states during election so they effectively don't matter? Not subsidizing farming is how you end up not being able to get critical goods during emergencies like Covid, you'll notice while there were toilet paper shortages, there wasn't a food shortage in the US.

the type of corn grown can be converted into other forms of calories like corn syrup that get used everywhere and are also used to feed livestock. Farm subsidies came about after the Dust Bowl so a single bad harvest doesn't ruin an otherwise capable farming operation

If the disaster that damaged the crops was “we used up all the soil” I’m not so sure this would work as a strategy. Is using up all the soil by growing ethanol a concern?

I hope that areas producing a lot of cotton and tobacco have strong enough ethics to switch to food producion to help those most in need rather than those seeking luxuries.

Ethics has little to do with it. Cotton and tobacco farmers mostly lack the equipment necessary to grow staple grains at a productive level. Much of the equipment is fairly specialized.

Also, cotton is hardly a “luxury”.

According to the Rice Outlook published by USDA, total global rice supply is 691.4 million tons [1][2]. If there is a shortage in production (of 8.7m) this year, it will simply debit against that total. Rice is stored for long term.

As of now that 8.7m figure is simply a forecast. The weather could turn favorable for the season and there could be a surplus. No, we cannot predict the weather beyond two weeks from now.

[1] https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/... [2] https://usda.library.cornell.edu/catalog?utf8=%E2%9C%93&loca...

Why is the increase in every single food item tied to the war in Ukraine?

Is that legitimate, or is that just timely excuse making?

The war in Ukraine drives up prices of fuel which has a knock on effect to just about everything else.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's also overlapping long tails of everything: from COVID global trade and shipping disruptions to war in Ukraine affecting grain shipments to rising fuel prices to...

Let's not forget natural gas is the main source of methane used to make synthetic fertilizers. Since Russian natural gas isn't flowing the way it used to, I can imagine that would increase the price of food.

"Climate change" is probably the long tail of everything you could add to the list. The flooding in Pakistan in 2022 for example. Remember that one? It destroyed crops and then there's the draining and fixing the land afterwards, infrastructure damage making planting for the next season more difficult, and so on. Pakistan was the 3rd global exporter of rice after India and Thailand in 2021.

Saudi Arabia effectively sets the price of oil. Ukraine doesn't produce any of it. Some tanks banging around the countryside there are not major consumers of oil, one oil tanker crossing the ocean is burning and blasting through orders of magnitude more oil.

Who said that Tanks in Ukraine are the main drivers to oil price increases?

The person I'm directly replying to said the war in Ukraine is causing oil prices to increase. What else would be using major amounts of oil in a war?

But like I said it's beside the point. The price of oil is effectively set by the production volume of Saudi Arabia. Ukraine does not factor into it at all.

Russia is a major oil exporter ~10 million barrels per day, and they are impacted by the war.

Their exports are humming along just fine as they've made new agreements with China and other countries to get out of the petro-dollar hegemony. It's been over a year and the sanctions against Russian oil exports appear to have done nothing.

If I posted as frequently within the short amount of time as you have on this topic, my account would have been throttled. My account is frequently throttled for posting more than 5-7 times per hour, and yet, your recent history shows a far higher rate of posts in defense of Russia with no evidence of throttling.

That's very interesting. I wonder if limits are relaxed above 8k karma.

I'm an American that's fed up with the continued support of sanctions and this useless war in Ukraine. We have flushed billions of dollars into this conflict and enacted pain on the world for zero gain. It's time for the west to admit failure on this and push Ukraine to bargain for a cease fire, even if it costs them contested territory like Crimea or Donbas. The history of conflict in those regions is quite complicated and zero concern for the US--we have far bigger problems at home to worry about.

Your biggest adversary, one that's cast a dark shadow over your country and it's allies, one that's consumed trillions of dollars of defence spending over the last 75 years, is now being ground down and exhausted with approximately zero of your countrymen's lives at risk and all for a mere few billion dollars. You're getting a bargain.

The USSR was a major adversary for roughly 45 years, 1946 to 1991. The US provided them major economic aid in WWII which they leveraged into a massive expansion and had minimal interaction before the war.

Russia is a politically distinct fragment of that empire, just like Ukraine.

Indeed “glavniy protivnik/glavniy vrag” is what USSR used to call USA!

Nope. It wasn't. It was the most likely adversary. Вероятный.

Ok “probable adversary” I stand corrected. I thought that one was a joke.

This war is catastrophic to Ukraine, but relatively costs pennies to western countries. They absolutely should continue armaments as long as Ukraine is willing to fight. Not doing so would mean allowing fascism and outright genocide to spread on European soil, and that would have an astronomical cost in the long run.

US and EU would be very, very shortsighted with their own interests if they didn't ship everything Ukraine wants.

Well, Ukr really wants foreign soldiers on the front line. Please tell me you're already there, or else I might suspect you're rooting for Putin!

The best response I've heard to this is: Tell me which part of the US you would willingly give up to Russia if it threatened to attack. If your response would be for them to pound sand, why should we expect or want any different for the Ukraine?

The US doesn't launch artillery into its own states like Texas for example. This is why I say the history of conflict in Crimea, Donbas, etc. is complicated--Ukraine government for years has done much aggression against ostensibly its own people (including firing on them with artillery!).

This is not a cut and dry, "Russia bad!! Russia invade!!". Some people in those contested regions welcomed Russia as protectors against Ukraine extremist aggressors.

As an American I have no skin in this fight and nor should I, this is a conflict for Ukraine and Russia to sort out hopefully through diplomacy. Russia has been a world power for decades post USSR fall and clearly have not been on a megalomaniacal quest for world domination. I see no reason to assume they want to start another world war.

The US most certainly has launched artillery into its own states, including Texas [1]. There's no benefit to doing so now, but if Mexico were to occupy all of Texas tomorrow, I guarantee the US would bomb inside Texas. Similarly, if Mexico just supplied support to get Texas to secede, there would also be violence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

The southern states started the civil war in protest against moves to end slavery which they profited from directly. It was not northern states deciding to be aggressors against the southern states for no good reason. The circumstances were completely different and you know it (it's in the wikipedia article you cite!).

It’s a lot more complicated than that as the Wikipedia page mentions. The southern states had ‘succeeded’ months before fighting broke out. Lincoln made some concessions but wasn’t willing to relinquish federal land in southern states or accept them having actually left. Meanwhile congress passed many new laws once southern state senators had left.

the history may be complicated, and that's why it's up to the UN, or bilateral negotiation between russia and Ukraine, to resolve the issue, rather than russia using force and trying to genocide Ukraine because russia is mad they don't get everything they want

indeed, as soon as russia abandoned the former, diplomacy, and resorted to the latter, force, they lost all benefit of the doubt and all rights to anything they wanted

and that's to say nothing of the fact that russian soldiers rape, torture, and murder men, women, and children in areas of Ukraine they control, so ceding control means allowing that to happen, which obviously means it wouldn't actually lead to peace, because who would be peaceful sacrificing THEIR friends, family, and countrypeople to that? You?

>"My account is frequently throttled for posting more than 5-7 times per hour"

Same here.

Possible answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29718710

I also wonder why what is basically Russian propaganda account has no limits and how it got to 8k karma, when it has basically nothing to say.

I know there is practice of buying established accounts with bunch of karma / followers to use for both marketing and propaganda purposes so that might be this case.

Respectfully, you are delusional if you think I've been on HN for years, posting in lots of unrelated threads, etc. to be some apparatus of Russian propaganda.

It's time to realize real, normal people are fed up with this useless conflict. That's the takeaway here that you refuse to see.

I know some people want Russia to win, and they are real. They are either ignorant or they are horrible and evil people.

Yes, people who don't think like you do are horrible human beings.

"Everyone who disagrees with my point of view must be ignorant or evil" is a terrible argument and only strengthens his point.

What a juvenile and reductive way to view people and relationships. Have you ever self-reflected and considered maybe you might be wrong about anything, ever? Have you ever extended any generosity of argument?

How about people are genuinely tired of the bs.

We are talking about genocidal war where the first thing the occupiers establish in occupied territories are torture rooms. Just last week, Russian soldiers admited on camera they had orders to murder children and went along with it.

What kind of self reflection would make people who are ok with that not complete filth I wonder?

Maybe some people don't realize that russian soldiers rape, torture, and murder men, women, elderly, children, in areas of Ukraine they control (as confirmed by UN war crimes investigations)?

Maybe these people are simply okay with that happening because they are 'tired'?

But the price of oil and gas is still up in Europe.

In the UK I was filling up the other day and reflecting how I'd being paying the exact same price 10 years ago.

My current car costs me 15p/mile to drive. Back in 2000 I remember it was costing me about 13p/mile -- that was in a car with worse mpg, but either way it feels it's never been cheaper to drive in the UK.

In 2004 it was 80p a litre, or £1.57 in today's money [1]. I filled up for well under £1.49 - I don't recall exactly.

In 2008 petrol peaked at £1.20 or £2.05 in today's money, about the same peak as last year's £1.90 a litre.

In real terms petrol today is well below 2018 levels

[0] https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time

[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/2004?amount=80

I'd argue that there is shitton of logistics around war which requires a lot of transportation

I believe the fuel being referred to is natural gas, much of which has historically come from Russia.

Russia is a major producer of oil and gas, which has been extremely sanctioned. Oil and gas that used to come from Russia need to come from somewhere else, raising demand (and thus, prices) for other producers.

No Russia made new agreements with China, India, etc. and their oil and gas is being "laundered" through sales to those countries and back out to the west. The sanctions have failed to do anything.

Not only failed, but backfired. All these Russia/China/India deals is the result of the sanctions. Heck, even Japan is now ignoring the price thresholds and buys from Russia.

Yup, and no one is paying for oil in dollars anymore. The global value of the dollar is going to be destroyed over time. It's really breathtaking how quickly the west has decided to shoot itself in the foot with nothing to show for it.

Cite your sources for the claim that “no one is paying for oil in dollars anymore”

The West has stood up to a blatant land-grab invasion and has armed Ukrainians with the means to defend themselves effectively. Decimating the Russian military without firing a shot is objectively a NATO victory, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

the ham-fisted SWIFT ban was the real mistake and that is what's driving countries away from the dollar more than anything. Removing Russia from SWIFT was the financial equivalent of launching nukes and will be seen as a major mistake long term

China's competitor to SWIFT has doubled in transaction volume since the sanctions and is growing fast - https://www.ft.com/content/6d5bbdbc-9f5d-41b2-ba80-7d8ac3973...

Russia’s economy is smaller and less diverse than the state of New York. People treat Russia as a near-peer when they are in reality a backwater gas station strapped to a cold-war era nuclear triad. The fact that their military can’t defeat ukraine is absolutely baffling, but indicative of how rotten that country has become.

Cutting them off from SWIFT isn’t a nuke in the new financial Cold War. It’s the consequence of the path Russia chose when they started this incredibly stupid invasion.

Framing western reactions to Russian stupidity as “the real mistake” shows that you aren’t paying enough attention. The US threw down the gauntlet against an unimportant Russian invasion to ensure China gets the message that the United States is ready for economic warfare over Taiwan. If that action decreases the likelihood of invasion by just 10-20%, it’s certainly worthwhile.

The Yuan has lost 7% of it's value against the Dollar in the last 3 months. The fact is the Dollar is incredibly strong, it's up over 6% on a year ago. Yes trade in marginal currencies like the Yuan is up because Russia is desperate, they will trade in anything right now, but this is all small change. It's easy to double transactions when they start from such a pitifully small level to start with. Demand for dollars is as high today as ever.

China regularly devalues the Yuan because they want it weaker to boost exports

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-turns-to-chinas-yuan-in-...

Russia _has_ to use the yuan but that’s a far cry from “everyone”.

China just paid for their first boat of yuan settled LG on the open market 20 days ago. After 6 years of offering it on their exchange. Their meeting with the Saudi’s last month came with non-committal statements, again, 6 years after they first started.

I think the yuan becoming more involved in the energy trade is inevitable, they are the largest energy importer in the world and a major economy. It may have even been accelerated by the sanctions on Iran and Russia. But to say that “no one is paying for oil in dollars anymore” is a ludicrous statement (probably one that comes from the posters hopes not the facts).

And adding the petroyuan to the mix is more dangerous to the Chinese currency than to the dollar. It immediately becomes imminently arbitrage-able in ways it can’t be currently due to currency controls. The Chinese government has been de-liberalizing their currency because they are worried what the markets will do to it.

That’s not to mention their treasury exposure, trade surpluses and the Middle Eastern states currency pegs.

A de-dollarization of the energy market will make it less efficient and may cause some rebalancing of currency reserves, but it will drive all settlement currencies to free market parity which is good for western currencies and bad for Chinese and Russian ones.

I agree that "no one is paying for oil in dollars anymore" is an overblown statement. However, the de-dollarization process was started in 2014 and will keep getting stronger. This matches the recent leaks (as well as the video confirmation by François Hollande - the former President of France), that the 2014 coup in Ukraine was staged and sponsored by the US. As a Ukrainian, I tend to believe that a good portion of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is driven by the de-dollarization fears of the US. The global superpower country is basically losing its main leverage, which is, in my personal opinion, a huge deal.

While the mainstream media keeps it all super positive, I think the US did a lot of miscalculations within the past several years. And honestly, something tells me that Putin will outplay them all. The guy is extremely smart and it's foolish to downplay him and say he is not. We shall see.

I’m not going to comment on your other opinions as I don’t have relevant experience. But de-dollarization was a common refrain in my field (finance) going back to before I was involved in it (2001).

I’ve seen everything from Nixon in China to the current Russian sanctions being used as reasons for it. I suspect the real reason it will happen is that people can make more money trading in yuan (or rupee) than in usd. Sadly, Russia and Ukraine just aren’t important enough to make a dent.

My personal opinion is that the dollar is the reserve currency (and thus the petro currency) is due to much less conspiratorial reasons. It spends all over the world. It isn’t debased frequently and it isn’t volatile.

China could introduce a currency that had all those properties tomorrow. That they haven’t is an indictment of using the yuan as a reserve currency. It would take a significant change to Chinese economics to make that true.

But! If China did that it wouldn’t save Russia. Modern currencies hate autocracy and despotism because it runs counter to their premise. It doesn’t help Russia for China to liberalize, the only thing that helps them is their own liberalization.

Thanks for the common sense response.

> My personal opinion is that the dollar is the reserve currency (and thus the petro currency) is due to much less conspiratorial reasons.

Agreed. There is zero conspiracy around that, which is why I believe the US loosing the natural power of the Dollar is a logical fear.

> It would take a significant change to Chinese economics to make that true.

..which is what BRICS aiming for? If that is one of their goals, nothing is going to stop them. And honestly, that's a good goal to have. Putting all the negative narrative around Russia/China aside and abstracting away from the US, why should a single country's currency dominate over the entire world? That's simply not fair.

> If China did that it wouldn’t save Russia

I somewhat disagree. Russia is not looking to be saved by anyone. Putin's interest is a mutually beneficial partnership. He's a businessman. He's cool with yuan (or any other currency) being the new reserve currency. On the other hand, he is not cool with the US pushing to be the superpower dictating the rules, which obviously goes against the United States' goals and ambitions. I could be wrong, but that's my understanding of things.

BRICS is not some counter balance to the US petro dollar. It is at best a coffee claque of countries with the most currency controls of any major economies and at worse a Chinese op to make the yuan more powerful. But the problem is that none of the BRICS nations want a market currency! They want a less dominant USD (which I personally think is understandable but short sighted) but they haven’t offered a viable alternative.

That is to say they each want their own currency to be as valuable as USD but haven’t done the things it would take to make that happen.

I don’t think it is “fair” that the USD is dominant but I think that oil settlement in other currencies is much less detrimental to USD than many people think. Again, if you can settle oil in your currency, you’ve effectively put it in competition with USD. The Chinese government has been fighting that outcome for as long as there has been modern Chinese currency, and frankly every other currency besides INR doesn’t matter for this conversation and INR also has been very controlled.

People seem to have it backwards. Global trade attaches to liberal currencies because that’s good for global trade. The US has the most liberal currency of all time (and the most liberal currency currently even with Russian sanctions) and that makes it the petro currency. If the yuan or the rupee liberalize enough to take over the petro trade then there won’t be much impact on usd but if they don’t then market forces will hurt them more than the US.

The thing that might cause a USD fall is a default on usd debt or the us becoming more conservative on their currency controls but there is so far to go on that compared to their comps it’s hard to extrapolate.

I don’t have opinions on Putins desires, it’s outside of my understanding. But picking the Chinese in a relationship where they have more powers than the previous relationship with Europe seems crazy to me. But international politics is not my sphere.

Appreciate your comments, Kasey, and thanks for the detailed response.

Off-topic: the link in your profile is no longer available.

It's getting hard to keep taking what you're posting here seriously. It's so wildly over the horizon from reality, it's hard to see the point of replying.

There is zero threat to the dollar. Demand for dollars is higher than ever, and it's still the primary currency for the oil trade, and pretty much any international trade. The recent economic instability has, as always happens, lead investors to flee to stability. That's the dollar, which is why it's up 6.6% over the last year.

What we have to show for the last year is utterly humiliating the Russian military, successfully helping Ukraine repel an assault on their capital, and push back the Russian army twice since in significant territorial losses. The west has never been more united, NATO is stronger than ever. The AUKUS pact and US-European alignment on Taiwan has solidified, despite typical French squirming, but they'll come around. They always do.

It's not like the economic picture is all roses, far from it, but that was happening already. The main achievement is that the fantasies Putin had of rolling back NATO are dead in a ditch, and I think the chances of a Chinese attack on Taiwan in the coming decade are half or less what they were a year ago.

It was big news this month when Russian oil exports finally made it back to prewar levels. Their revenue is still off by ~45% from prewar.

The sanctions absolutely did something. Though I think it’s reasonable to ask if they caused a net increase in the cost of oil after the initial shock given how big a discount Russian oil buyers are getting. Though even if exports stabilized it’s possible the market is paying a risk premium.

The point of the sanctions was to impact Russia's economy. Remember whole 'ruble is rubble' thing? The IMF expects Russia's economy to see net growth this year [1] after seeing a total decline of -2.1% last year. Their inflation rate is currently 7%, expected to hit 4.6% by the end of the year.

As for oil prices, it's important to remember that oil prices before the war were very high, and they got even higher in the early parts of it. In February 21, 2022 (the invasion was on the 24th) prices were at $90/barrel. They hadn't been that high since 2014. [2] So it's easy to be somewhat misled just considering before/after scenarios.

[1] - https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/RUS

[2] - https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil

I think it’s entirely fair to suggest the sanctions did not achieve their desired goals.

I think it’s an entirely different thing to suggest it did “nothing”.

Oil revenues are off 45%. Its GDP was down 2% in 2022 while the thing it exports was up. Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE GDP set a record over the same time period as a point of reference. The OECD and World Bank anticipate GDP shrinkage this year as well.

The ruble is at its lowest point in 20 years (if you remove the war shock). Thats even with the heroic activity of their central bank last year and current capital flight restrictions. Their sovereign wealth fund holds 16% less today than it did before the sanctions, because its being used to backstop the currency.

The IMF is using the countries' own claims and numbers for their calculations. Russia's own economic numbers have been unreliable since Covid hit and blatantly cooked up since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

This paper gives a more correct view on the dire state of the Russian economy:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4167193

That article is almost a year old now. Where's the collapse?

In just about every one of their industries...

A fair part of Russian economic 'growth' is in military supplies. When you are attacking another country and looking at almost no gains in the end this is a disaster of epic levels. If you have a gain in the end you can justify the expense in the revenue from the spoils you captured.

At it's current rate Russia is looking like it will get none of that. It will not gain any new territory. It will lose massive amounts of equipment and personnel directly. It has lost massive numbers of better off people that left the country. This is a demographic and economic nightmare, that keeps getting worse when you look at the preconditions.

Before the war Russia was making huge amounts selling natural resources, but was already running into problems funding its retirement (something Putin said he'd never touch when he was first elected). Well in the past few years Putin did have to raise the retirement age and tried to reduce the retirement benefits which was causing massive problems internally. Now that problem is even worse and puts Russia at risk of complete internal collapse.

You can take a stroll about Moscow anytime you fancy. Search a video site for something like "прогулка по москве 2023". That simply means 'a walk around Moscow 2023.' Here's [1] one from 5 days ago. One could describe what you see in many ways, but a complete economic collapse is probably not one of them.

As for the war, look at the leaks; you're expected to. That's why they're not being given the Twitter Files treatment. There was a conscious decision to cover them and regularly emphasize points such as the predictions for Ukraine's counter offensive. Watch how the media narrative on Ukraine is (and will continue to) suddenly shift. We seem to be hitting that 'lab leak' "messaging" inflection point with Ukraine. The Washington Post is now even running an opinion piece suggesting NATO could bypass Ukraine and directly negotiate with Russia, making some substantial concessions, in an effort to try to end the war. [2]

The problem with pensions is mostly about fertility. Like most of the developed world, Russia's fertility rate is abysmal. So you have an ever-growing group of older individuals who are supposed to be supported by an ever smaller group of younger individuals. It's the reason retirement ages are going up everywhere. Russia increased theirs from 60 to 65. In the US and Norway full retirement is 67, France just bumped theirs from 62 to 64, and so on. In low fertility countries, rich and poor alike, expect retirement age to gradually approach life expectancy. A sub-replacement fertility means there is no equilibrium point. Your youth population is constantly shrinking, and trending towards zero. Of course bloody wars aren't helping on this front.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tD1crjaeYQ

[2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/19/nato-coul...

While partially true, you would still expect cost increases from oil flowing through China and India.

I believe Russia is also a major fertilizer exporter and nitrogen fertilizers have more or less doubled in price

Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas, so maybe the nitrogen fertilizer plants in the EU were shut down to ensure adequate supplies for the EU's more inelastic demands for natural gas.

(More precisely, the natural gas is a cheap source of hydrogen atoms that get combined with nitrogen in the air to produce the fertilizer.)

Maybe Russia realized that it would be profitable to use some of the natural gas it could no longer sell to Europe to make nitrogen fertilizer, but it takes many months to build the capacity to produce and export it, and in the meantime of course the price remains high.

The sanctions didn’t fail. They probably complicated the oil transport logistics a lot. There’s been stories of how uninsured Russian tankers offload oil bear Gibraltar. Then the oil goes somewhere in China(or India). I suppose it’s going to find its way back to Europe as “Indian diesel”.

So, exactly as you describe. But all of this should add costs even if the crude oil prices are at the proposed ceiling.

Who lost? Russia and the EU. But who said that wasn’t the plan.

It's been a year, where is this collapse of the Russian economy? It looks like they're doing just fine and can continue to wage war near indefinitely. What are the sanctions even doing at this point??

The sanctions were supposed to sever the ties between Russia and the EU. That worked perfectly. Same as the refugee crisis. The two most active supporters of Ukraine(USA and UK) take almost no refugees from Ukraine. It’s the EU that suffers from having to support them.

What? The US has taken an enormous amount of Ukraine refugees: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/us-admits-27100...

271,000! That's over double their goal of 100k! They explicitly got rid of refugee restrictions put in place at the start of the pandemic so they could let in Ukraine refugees.

Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia combined took twice more than that. 271k is nothing for US given their role in the conflict.

Those countries are next door to Ukraine, a refugee can literally walk to them vs. someone paying for a plane flight to the US. Of course neighboring countries will have more refugees...

A refugee can pay literally 200 EUR and fly to US from Warsaw. I assure you many paid up to two orders of magnitude more just to flee the county.

It’s about the local laws put in place. The EU takes refugees with almost no preconditions. Maybe that’s why the EU leaders try to come up with a peace plan once in a while, unlike UK or US.

"given their role in the conflict" is pretty ambiguous, if you're referring to russia's war on, and latest genocide of, Ukraine

could you elaborate on what role you're speaking of, and why you personally think it makes the admittances below your standards?

Go bait somewhere else, mate. Your question has nothing to do with the topic we’re discussing.

your post would be a good response to yourself mate, as your opinion of the US's "role in the conflict" has nothing to do with the topic we're discussing and seems to be bait

You’re free to just walk past by. Nobody forced you to respond.

that seems like it would be a good response to this post you made after yourself baiting and deflecting from the topic we were discussing, mate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35643805

The Russian economy absolutely cratered when sanctions were rolled out. What are you talking about?

https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/stock-market

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/impact-sanct...

Russia has bounced back and are continuing to wage war just fine despite the sanctions. What is the point of them now?

I don't think Russia has "bounced back." And coloring their war-making ability as "just fine" erases all differentiation in cost and effectiveness caused by sanctions.

> What is the point of them now?

I mean, I think they still impose cost and hinder Russia's war-making ability. So it's good to keep them if you like that impact?

You have also moved the goalposts some from upthread[1]:

> The sanctions have failed to do anything.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35628560

Sanctions are greatly increasing the cost of the war to Russia, and reducing their industrial capacity to wage it. Their rate of shelling as been falling steadily, and they are losing armoured vehicles at twice their replacement rate. Their spring offensive was so futile there was actually a lot of confusion about whether they actually launched it yet. They had, and it got massacred.

Easing sanctions would greatly increase the rate at which they could produce military equipment, particularly high tech guided munitions. That would equal more dead Ukrainians.

>just fine

Whaaa? Russia is sending T-55s to their front to deal with massive material losses. The losses are closer to the numbers we'd expect in WWII, not a local border war where they are the attacker.

You are watching Putin fight to keep alive (note, not keep Russia alive) at this point. Bakmut will go down in history has Putin's mad king moment.

Russia has $75T in known resource reserves. The US is second at $45T.

Do you really think Russia can't afford to insure oil tankers if the West refuses to do it?

It's not about "afford" (insurance is, after all, a profit-generating business), it's about being able to.

They have the resources to make their own insurance company.

The question is, will this company be recognized by all required players (ports, authorities etc.). If you're insuring something worth hundreds of millions of dollars, you really want the insurance company to meet certain standards, and have a good reputation of paying out. Can Russian achieve that? Probably. Can they do it quickly? That sounds much trickier.

If Russia doesn't back its insurance it loses credibility around the world.

Russia is a major player in the oil world. It has the relationships and experience to manage this.

Russia is massively underdeveloped. It would take a few trillion dollars in funding just to extract a relatively small fraction of those known resources. They are also massively under populated. They do not have the financial nor the human capital to even extract a 1/10th of that wealth in their current state.

China had invested a lot in Russia in the Belt and Roads initiative to extract natural resources, and it is looking like Russia will default on those loans.

This is extremely wrong. The pipes are not flowing. There is oil being transferred via ships, but this is a much smaller volume and is much more expensive. It is not possible to sell the same amount without the pipelines to Europe.

Russian exports and revenues have fallen drastically.

You are not up to date on the reality of the situation, Russian oil exports are back to prewar levels: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/14/energy/russia-oil-exports-iea...

They sell oil to a lot more places than Europe!

But what about the price of gas and oil on Europe, isn't that the salient point?

The goal of sanctions wasn't to raise the price of oil, it was to crush the Russian economy which the west assumed depended on Russia exporting oil and gas directly to Europe. That goal appears to have failed as Russia just made new agreements to sell oil/gas to other countries (who then sell to Europe).

On the contrary, that goal has worked pretty well. Russia has to sell crude now, plus at very low price points. It's a shame that China and especially India continue to buy, but at least they're taking advantage of the situation to pay a pittance so Russia isn't making profits with it.

Russia's economy isn't crushed but it has now a massive budget deficit that isn't sustainable without some extreme adaptations.

Your own link cited a 43% drop in revenue, a 21% drop in income, and a large deficit.

Yes but the purpose of sanctions isn't important to me. My question is has the war increased the prices of fuel that the global supply chain relies on and, in turn, wholesale prices for goods.

Cool. But if you’re only going to look out for yourself, don’t be surprised when you’re at the bottom of the list of concerns for people who are looking to cooperate for the common good.

That's such an uncharitable reading of my words that I'm struggling not to be offended.

Of course the sanctions are important to me.

But the original question was Does the war in Ukraine affect global prices for seemingly unrelated things.

When I say the purpose of the sanctions aren't important to me I feel it's obvious that I mean only within the context of answering this question.

Sure. Sorry. Fwiw, I don’t think that’s implied at all however. I think it strongly implies that the purpose of the sanctions simply don’t matter to you. Which is a common opinion

It’s still going to be a lot lower than it would have been. The important bit from a sanction perspective is that their revenue is down 43%.

And oil&gas revenue make up a significant portion of the government's budget.

Do not conflate volume with value and oil with natural gas.

Natural gas exports to Europe was Russia's big thing. The value of their oil and natural gas exports to the rest of world has failed make up for this loss.

Even for Russian oil your own link says there has been a 43% drop in revenue and a 21% drop in income.

Cutting off Russian oil completely was never the plan, it would have lead to an extremely damaging spike in oil prices that would have hurt everybody. Rather, the objective was to keep Russian oil flowing, while dramatically reducing the extent to which Russia profits from it.

This has worked, the prices Russia is getting for their oil are single digit dollars above their production costs, which are going up due to sanctions, while global oil prices remained fairly stable.

India and such buying cheap Russian oil is an intended outcome, not a problem. Good for them. It also helps that India is processing this oil into value-add exports that are pricing out Russian alternatives.

Also the cost/availability of fertilizer on the other side of the conflict

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/28/1125525861/how-the-war-in-ukr...

If you read further down in the article, China is suffering from a drought that’s been the worse in decades

Edit monsoon not drought. Thanks s1artibartfast

“In the second half of last year, swaths of farmland in the world’s largest rice producer China were plagued by heavy summer monsoon rains and floods. The accumulated rainfall in the country’s Guangxi and Guangdong province, China’s major hubs of rice production, was the second highest in at least 20 years, according to agriculture analytics company Gro Intelligence. Similarly, Pakistan — which represents 7.6% of global rice trade — saw annual production plunge 31% year-on-year due to severe flooding last year, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), labeling the impact as ‘even worse than initially expected.’”

Reading further, I’m not sure why Ukraine is mentioned either since their major food export is wheat and not rice

Point of clarification, China is suffering from monsoon, not drought

The country's land mass is big enough that it's possible for both to be true, no?

Possible, but article actually supports one reason and not the other.

>The accumulated rainfall in the country’s Guangxi and Guangdong province, China’s major hubs of rice production, was the second highest in at least 20 years,

One thing I could think of spontaniously is this: Ukraine is exporting less (they seemed to recover, but markets and the bullwhip effect don't care rigjt away), so shortfall of Ukrainian grain has to be compensated and rice is one such alternative. As a result some of the grain shortages are causing rice shortages. Throw in problems in China and the situation gets really confusing and complex.

It's really a combination of drought in some regions and monsoon in others, both being pushed to extremes by fossil-fueled global warming:

https://www.gro-intelligence.com/insights/china-drought-thre...

> "(Aug 22) China has issued a nationwide drought warning as the country copes with scant rainfall and one of the most severe heat waves in six decades. The harsh weather is stressing rice and wheat crops and could force China to increase imports of these important grains....In addition, soil moisture levels are at a 12-year low, and Gro’s Drought Index reading is elevated. "

https://www.gro-intelligence.com/insights/extreme-weather-me...

> "(Jun 2022) Typically, China's rainy season occurs from May to September, and this year’s season is already off to an extreme start. The accumulated rainfall in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Fujian is the second highest in at least 20 years, and some regions, such as Guangdong and Guangxi, have experienced double the average daily precipitation for the May to June period..."

These extreme fluctuations in drought and flood are not going away, of course, and will continue to get worse over the next 100 years.

Also climate change and environmental racism are to blame most likely

Ukraine isn't called the breadbasket of europe for no reason. It's hard to grow crops for export when you're at war.

Still only responsible for 3% of global production, and there are bigger European producers:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/top-10-countries-prod...

Wouldn't it make sense to combine Ukraine with Russia given the sanctions?

No, because Russia has enough willing buyers for its production.

Didn't Poland decide they didn't actually need Ukraine's grain and it's just sitting in ports rotting? https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/16/europe/poland-bans-grain-ukra...

Doesn't seem like there is much demand for Ukraine grain.

> Doesn't seem like there is much demand for Ukraine grain.

Always with the disinformation.

Ukraine's main exports for grain are obviously not in Europe. https://oec.world/en/profile/country/ukr/

> Always with the disinformation.

There is no need for accusations like this. There is a grain glut in Europe to the extent that Poland and other countries are closing their borders to imports (I think it has something to do with the fact that's it's difficult ship over the black sea due to obvious reasons and the land routes are lacking in capacity).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/17/slovakia-joins...

Yes, exactly. There's large need for Ukrainian grain elsewhere, but export via sea routes is obviously very hard with the war going on. My comment was about the parent trying to twist this to mean there's no demand for the grain, which obviously isn't true.

Export would include sea exports of course. Where's the misinformation?

I don't get your point about exports, I think there's some misunderstanding? Misinformation in this case is to claim there's no demand for Ukrainian grain.

But misinformation is rife in the whole discussion and most others in the same topic. As soon as anything about Russia is discussed, we get a spirited comment section telling how well Russia is doing, how West is failing, and how Ukraine would be better off by just voluntarily ceding its lands that actually belonged to Russia all this time anyway.

> and the land routes are lacking in capacity

It's the costs of transporting the same amount by land. Bulk carrier takes ~50000t, you need ~2500 long semis to haul this amount at best. Include the gas, drivers salary etc.

Just an aside but wheat grain lasts basically forever so it's not exactly rotting.

But the problem now is that there is way too much grain in Europe to the extent that neighboring countries are banning imports from Ukraine to protect their farmers...

The article suggests is due to rice replacing other grains in the global diet.

Between Russia and the Ukraine 27% of the worlds wheat supply is impacted by the war and another 15% of the worlds corn.

It seems reasonable to conclude that would have an impact on the price of other grain staples.

And yet wheat futures (ZW) have been falling steadily for the past six months and are now below the pre-invasion levels.

price =|= availability

The very purpose of futures contracts is to ensure availability in the future at a predetermined price. I am not sure what your point is.

That there is no guarantee that the stuff will be available so, thing shappen. Also, just because futures are cheap, doesn't mean stuff is available now or in the near future. It only means the markets think grain will be plenty at one point, and thus cheap.

All a low futures price means is that money men are betting there won't be a shortage, it doesn't say anything about whether there will be a shortage or not.

Price is not solely determined by availability, but it is largely determined by availability, especially in the case of rapid shifts in availability (since other factors take time to adjust in response).

That would imply that rice pressure would come down in the future easing the deficit (assuming global tastes haven’t permanently changed).

The article mentions a surplus next year is anticipated.

Yet Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria say Ukrainian grain is too cheap and upsets local farmers. Guys, but the EU said it was for feeding the poor, and not for making pierogi. I’m so confused at this point.

Both could be true. A glut of product trying to make its way through ports & other logistic routes that it usually doesn't, might drive down the price of the product at those ports—while, globally, the supply might be lower and prices higher.

Think up a toy case with some remote old-west town coming into a glut of some bulky, perishable good, but having only one train line to distribute it, and the potential for this effect becomes clear. Or an island, or whatever. The logistics systems in question aren't that isolated, obviously, but they still have limited capacity that's unlikely to go up much in response to anything perceived as only a temporary situation, so they absolutely might see local prices (including for export) depressed even as global prices rise. It's not implausible.

I think it’s a lot of words trying to justify why the “grain deal” hasn’t achieved the declared goals. I’m sure lots of profit has been made though.

> Is that legitimate, or is that just timely excuse making?

Arguably[1] a bit of both.

[1] https://scholarworks.umass.edu/econ_workingpaper/343/

So there's a big long video by Petar Zeihan at the Iowa Pork Conference but the TL;DR is that the Ukraine and Russia are 2 or the world's 3 leading producers of nitrogen.

This is a critical component of fertilizer. Because of fertilizer we weren't just able to make land good for crops better for crops we were able to make land that was marginal for crops good for crops.

Because of this we could farm a lot more land; however with less fertilizer suddenly that land can't be farmed. What this means is less arable land = less food.

As a result the supply decreases while demand increases, leading to a price increase.

So yes it is a real excuse, and the problem is that many nations in the world import more than 50% of their calories and almost no nations on earth are calorically self sufficient.

I mean, 1/4 of the world's grain and fertilizer sources are now in a war zone. It would take some hubris to assume we weren't going to feel that in some way.

War in Ukraine is being used by politicians all across the world to distract from their own fuck-ups, power grab, infringement on freedoms etc. etc.

Across the EU at least, margins of big-box retailers have gone through the roof. So producers are shafted because fuel and fertilisers are crazy expensive, and consumers are shafted because prices are going through the roof much faster than wages. The middle-man with enough bargaining power to effectively dictate purchasing prices to producers absorbs all the profit, using "the inflation" as a marketing cover.

So food will cost more. But nobody remembers the rice shortage of 20 years ago; and this one will also be largely irrelevant, in the big scheme of things.

i feel as though these days prices fail to return back to normal after sharp spikes like they have in the past, anecdotally

Oh, they're never going back. We're all going to be less wealthy going forward. But it isn't because of a rice shortage.

Probably because you are very far from the people actually dying from hunger?

There has always been enough food to feed the hungry, and there will continue to be enough with this rice shortage. That's not the reason people starve.

There's always enough food to feed the hungry... Until there isn't. What makes you so sure that there will continue to be enough food indefinitely?

Oh, at some point we'll be hit by a meteor, and anyone who manages to avoid death in the initial impact will surely starve to death. But then, a dip in rice production, no worse than one from twenty years prior, won't be the issue.

Didn't it cause revolutions and riots? I'm sure people who were barely or not at all affected don't remember and think it was irrelevant, but why would you think that was universal?

Africa's population has nearly doubled since the year 2000. (819 million to 1.4 billion)

Africa also imports a lot of rice.

In the meantime I am facing a loss of 31% on my wheat ETF. When Russia invaded Ukraine it was said everywhere how much it was going to affect the price of wheat. I guess there are better speculators than me that can influence media and create a buying sentiment.

I also deserve it, not only I learnt a lesson, but there's something fundamentally wrong about speculating with food. For some reason I didn't even think about that and at some point I was like what am I doing?

Well I assume it was solidly in the plus for a while? If yes, then the assumption was right at least for a while — which might be just another instance of market timing working out or not working out.

The lesson in the first part of your comment is very important, but the second paragraph is a miss: "there's something fundamentally wrong about speculating with food".

Absolutely not. Besides being one of the oldest types of speculation, speculation on food provides farmers with a guaranteed sale price for their product months in advance. Without futures contracts speculation, farmers would have to assume ALL the price risk. And more of them would fail as a result of market fluctuations. As it stands, the futures markets allows for expansion of finance and insurance in the industry, which ultimately improves stability in the entire food supply chain.

The issue is more whether the profits from an activity like that are reasonable. One could imagine taxing such profits at a much higher rate, just to pick a simple change that’s compatible with the current system.

But price discovery is a public good.

Sure, but what’s its value? It doesn’t make sense to compensate people for significantly more than the value of the work they’re doing.

Maybe we should set up a market to discover the fair price of price discovery.

Oh wait, that's the derivatives market.

There is no objective formula for determining what is reasonable. That's an entirely subjective thing. Everyone tries to buy low and sell high for anything they produce. A manufacturer will try to get the cheapest price for all of the raw materials that goes into their goods and they will try to charge the highest price they can. They are only ever kept in check by competition and alternative choices in the marketplace. And the market functions to regulate profits by producing more supply whenever there's an imbalance.

The market is not the only possible judge here.

Anyway, I didn’t say anything about objectivity. Of course “reasonable” is subjective.

But if we have some basic values, we can make objective judgements about what furthers those values and what doesn’t.

For example, we could decide that it’s not conducive to an equitable society to allow single individuals to make and keep billions of dollars on some small number of trades.

And in fact, that was the case for decades before Reagan cut the highest marginal tax rate from 70% to 28%, which directly led to staggering inequality today.

Modifying what the original commenter said, there’s something fundamentally wrong with profiting massively on speculation with food.

> When Russia invaded Ukraine it was said everywhere how much it was going to affect the price of wheat.

The UN, and large wheat-exporting countries, took action here. For example, exports of wheat through the Black Sea were prioritized. Fertilizer export and transport was fast-tracked around the world. Wheat-exporting countries said they won't sell to traders, only directly to other governments.

It took a lot of effort (which didn't get a lot of media publicity) to prevent a wheat shortage.

Bravo on the ethical double-take. It's hard.

If you're so inclined, I'd like to hear your speculation: would you have found that second thought as easy if your wheat ETF were _up_ 31%?

There is nuance to be had when it comes to rice. There is no ONE rice, there are many varieties of Rice and people and cultures are very specific about 'their' rice. Right at the time of planting you are deciding which market you are targeting.

The consumption pattern of Ponni rice is very different from Basmati, and these are differences in Indian subcontinent, we are not even talking about South East Asia, China or Japan.

Rice is a complex market and by its nature fragmented. Also, it is very hard crop to harvest given that you have to flood the field twice. If Ukraine was rice bowl of the world, we would already have large scale famine kicked in right now.

The wheat shortages will come and will become apparent by the end of this year or early next.

Here in Italy the production of rice is stopped due to a severe drought, consequence of the climate crisis.

*Stopped in the sense that farmers couldn't even sow the rice.

Why does it feel that so many trends that were "emerging" are now all suddenly converging? I've gone through a lot of macro data and everything from climate change and fertilizers to food and automation and monetary policy seems to be breaking down at the same time.

Is there a whitepill scenario for the remaining years in this decade?

Many people, myself included, think we're headed for global societal collapse. Or, more to the point, things have deteriorated to the point where collapse has already started to happen and is now accelerating, which accounts for the convergence of trends you're seeing.

This decade might be asking a lot.

This century I like Schmachtenberger's take.

I've never heard of Schmachtenberger but this is what chatGPT had to say about his take. Accurate?

===

Daniel Schmachtenberger is a philosopher, systems thinker, and futurist known for his work in global systems change and the development of a more resilient and sustainable civilization. His take on this century can be characterized by the following key points:

Existential risks and global catastrophic risks: Schmachtenberger emphasizes that humanity faces a range of existential and global catastrophic risks, including nuclear war, pandemics, climate change, artificial intelligence, and others. He argues that we need to address these risks comprehensively and proactively to ensure a sustainable and thriving future.

Game theory and rivalrous dynamics: Schmachtenberger highlights the importance of understanding game theory and the rivalrous dynamics that drive competition and conflict. He argues that many of our current challenges stem from win-lose dynamics that incentivize short-term thinking, self-interest, and resource depletion.

Comprehensive sense-making: Schmachtenberger stresses the need for better sense-making and information processing to navigate the complex, interconnected challenges we face. He advocates for interdisciplinary approaches that can provide a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the world.

Civilizational resilience: Schmachtenberger advocates for building a more resilient and adaptive civilization by fostering cooperation, developing better decision-making systems, and focusing on long-term, sustainable solutions.

A vision for a sustainable and thriving civilization: Schmachtenberger envisions a future where humanity transcends its current challenges and embraces a more cooperative, sustainable, and equitable global society. This includes the development of regenerative economic systems, effective governance structures, and cultural shifts that prioritize collective well-being over individual gain.

accurate summary, but that 'vision for sustainable and thriving civilization' involves some rather poetic language which gets overlooked by a 'facts-first' engine like chatgpt. He's the only person I've encountered who seems both realistic and optimistic - albeit that optimism involves some amount of faith in an emergent intelligence greater than any single human is capable of. But he also touches on how individuals can relate to that kind of intelligence, which I find helpful. Hard to paraphrase though - if you're interested I'd recommend you bing his 'butterfly metaphor'.

Maybe things are actually pretty okay, and it’s just the information we get makes it seem like everything is falling apart.

Remember Y2K? Everyone thought we would have mass system failure across the world. And while some systems did fail and some people had to work diligently against the clock to make patches, for the most part, it was just okay.

I suspect this rice shortage is probably similar to the Y2K situation

I mean, we just came out of once in a lifetime pandemic...sometimes, things actually do happen.

I’m not saying that rice production won’t be short or that there won’t be some small hiccups, but is it worth the attention of all these lay-people.

The news about this rice production is not going to have more of an impact on your personal life than e.g. taking the time to call your mom and tell her you love her. We all sit around worrying about the rice production and don’t actually work on the things that are immediately applicable to all of us.

Remember working really hard to fix those problems before Y2K, because I do.

There is nothing wrong that with saying a system is at risk of failing. It gets people to pay attention to the system and to ensure it doesn't fail.

It's the systems that we don't pay attention to that can lead to massive loss of life.

I don't like the Y2K as an example to this, hubris and overconfidence over solving Y2K might lead us (our leaders, specifically) to dropping the ball on the 2037 problem. And we could have the largest "food rotting in ports" famine of the century. It won't just be the 2037 problem, it'll the last few decades of cutting corners that will build up to this.

Anyways, that's wild speculation on my part, maybe all software will be rewritten with 64bit timestamps by an AI by 2036.

2027 is likely to be better that 2035.

The Tonga Eruption in Dec/Jan of last year is probably a factor.

potatoes grow super easily and are the food with highest satiety (so it's highly nutritious) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/, so we could turn more to that

> potatoes grow super easily

True dat. My neighbor threw some potato peelings into her compost heap, and later used that compost to fertilize her roses. Lo and behold, she had potatoes growing between the roses a couple months later.

If weather could be modified on a global scale it would be one of the greatest weapons of all.

There are hundreds of patents for weather modification techniques, many filed recently.

The unusually warm Winter in Ukraine has hurt the Russian war effort, and protected Europe from economic devastation.

The timing was quite fortuitous.

Example of one of these techniques please

See sibling comment. All non-government weather modification projects in the U.S. must file form 17-4(a) with the NOAA.

All submissions have been indexed and are viewable on their webpage.

Every submission in there has to do with precipitation. I was curious which techniques are used to sustained warming throughout the winter

The atmosphere is enclosed. You can't change the weather, but you can move things around. Europe had an unusually warm Winter. The US had an unusually cold one. It was just amazing timing for the Ukranian war effort.

With a normal European Winter NATO would have fallen apart as the EU cracked on the Russian energy sanctions to warm themselves, and the Russian army would have had massively increased mobility options with frozen ground in the Ukraine.

https://patents.justia.com/search?q=weather+modification

Capturing comets to cool the earth. Triggering volcanic eruptions to heat the earth

A friendly reminder that in the U.S., as a non-government organization, if you’d like to modify the weather you need to fill out the NOAA form 17-4(a).

This is required by U.S. Code 15§ 330a as per Public Law 92-205 (1972): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/330a

All weather modification projects that have been filed with the NOAA under this law can be found here: https://www.library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections...

It’s important to note that religious ceremonies are exempted from this law. NOAA form 17-4(a) does not need to be submitted for rain dances or other religious ceremonies intended to change the weather. This, however, is likely to change if the success rates of your weather ceremony become statistically significant.

What a beautiful way to put this.

Except the ones that are done under high secrecy for national security purposes.

Weather is a huge factor in warfare and the economy. If it could be manipulated to put an enemy in a bad position that would be a powerful weapon indeed, best yet it would be one with plausible deniability.

This is the stuff wars are made of

Rice is a very thirsty crop. Water is becoming scarce as the effects of global warming/climate change worsen the effects of natural weather events.

Not sure why we are surprised. We have been warned for decades yet governments around the world continue to let O&G industry to pollute the planet with no repercussions. Eating habits of rich countries have not changed much as meat is still heavily consumed.

The ultra rich continue to pollute with reckless abandon with super cars, private jets, yachts, and other GHG heavy activities.

The average US consumer is buying SUVs and trucks at alarming rates and for the most part are just hauling air or carrying 1-2 people in a single vehicle.

Public transportation and more efficient modes of transportation (walking, biking) are replaced by inefficient car centric transportation, parking lots, parking garages, street parking in most the US.

I don’t know how we are going to reach the goal of reducing our carbon footprint.

What’s next is: world wide famines, commodity wars

If you read the article, it states the shortage has to do with flooding, not drought.

While most of your points are true, they are skewed toward some resentment toward the West.

The eating habits of rich countries, relative to developing countries, has become much more sustainable. Look at meat consumption by source, over time, in USA. Chicken, which has the highest feed conversion ratio, leads the pack by a huge margin since the late 90s/early 2000s.

Developing countries' demand for meat has exploded and will continue to rise as incomes go up.

What percent of the global population lives in a developing country? ~85%.

Over time, these countries will be responsible for most meat consumption. And emissions.

Regarding pollution, you are focusing on the wrong things. Sure, private jets are inefficient. What is their contribution to GHGs? Less than 0.05%. Super car and yachts? Come on..

As energy infrastructure is built out for this 85% of the population, the emissions per nation will flip on its' head.

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